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THE 



HIRELING AND SLAVE. 



After all, Slavery in their case (the Jamaica Slaves) is but another name for 
servitude. M. G. Lewis. 



Irish whites have been lonff emancipated, and nobody asks them to work, or 
permits them to work, on condition of finding them potatoes. Carlyle. 



CHARLESTON. 

JOIIJSr RUSSELL. 
1854. 






XX-JM'Ti 



1 



cf 



TO 



JAMES L PETIGRU, LL.D. 



I BEG permission to inscribe the following verses to you. 
If not a fit offering to your taste and judgment, they at least give me an oppor- 
tunity for saying how much I admire the wit, intellect and learning, which you 
have devoted with so much success to every noble purpose ; which have never 
failed friend or stranger in distress, nor shrunk from a toil or sacrifice required 
by Justice, Humanity, or Generosity. 

The most exalted station in society is that of the advocate who employs dis- 
tinguished legal attainments and abilities to defend the unfortunate, vindicate 
truth and right, and maintain law, order and established government — and 
this station is universally admitted to be yours. 



PREFACE. 



The malignant abuse lavished on the Slaveholders of 
America, b}^ writers in this country and England, can be 
accounted for, but in one way, consistently with any degree 
of charitable consideration for the slanderers. They have 
no knowledge of the thing abused. They substitute an ideal 
of their own contriving for the reality. They regard Sla- 
very as a system of chains, whips and tortures. They con- 
sider its abuses as its necessary condition, and a cruel master 
its fair representative. Mr. Clarkson took up the subject, 
originally, as a fit one for a rhetorical College exercise, and 
it became a rhetorical exercise for life to himself and his 
followers. With these people the cruelty of Slavery is an 
affair of tropes and figures only. They have shown as little 
regard for truth, fairness and common sense, as they would 



VI, PREFACE. 

do to gather all the atrocities of their owu country commit- 
ted by husbands and wives, parents and children, masters 
and servants, priest and people, and denounce these several 
relations in life in consequence of their abuses. 

They do not deny that the labourer suffers wrong, abuse 
and cruelty in England, but they say it is against the law, 
against public opinion ; he may apply to the Courts for 
redress ; these are open to him. Cruelty to the Slave is 
equally against the law. It is equally condemned by public 
opinion ; and as to the Courts of Law being open to the 
pauper hireling, we may remember the reply of Sheridan to 
a similar remark, — yes, and so are the London hotels — jus- 
tice and a good dinner, with Champagne, are ecjually within 
his reach. If, in consequence of the evils incident to hire- 
ling labour — because there are severe, heartless, grinding 
employers and miserable starving hirelings, it were proposed 
to abolish hireling labour, it would be quite as just and logi- 
cal as the argument to abolish Slavery because there are 
sufferings among Slaves, and hard hearts among masters. 
The cruelty or suffering is no more a necessary part of the 
one system than of the other. (Notwithstanding its abuses 
and miseries, the hireling system works beneficially with 



PREFACE. Vll. 

white labourers ; and so also, notwithstanding hard masters, 
Slavery, among a Christian people, is advantageous to the 
negro. JTo attempt to establish the hireling system with 
Africans, would be as wise as *to endeavour to bestow the 
constitutional government of England on Ashantee or Da- 
homey. In both cases there would be an equal amount of 
abstract truth and practical absurdity. 

Slavery is that system of labour which exchanges subsist- 
ence for work, which secures a life-maintenance from the 
master to the slave, and gives a life-labour from the slave to 
the master. The slave is an apprentice for life, and owes 
his labour to his master ; the master owes support, during 
life, to the slave. (^Slavery is the negro system of labour. 
He is lazy and improvident. Slavery makes all work, and 
it ensures homes, food and clothing to all. It permits no 
idleness, and it provides for sickness, infancy and old age. 
It allows no tramping or skulking, and it knows no pau- 
perism. 

This is the whole system substantially. All cruelty is an 
abuse ; does not belong to the institution ; is punished and 
may be prevented and removed. The abuses of Slavery are 
as open to all reforming influences as those of any other 



Vlll. PREFACE 



civil, social, or political condition. The improvement in the 
treatment of the slave is as marked as in that of any other 
labouring class in the world. If it be true of the English 
soldier or sailor, that his condition has been ameliorated in 
the last fifty years, it is quite as true of the negro. 

If Slavery is subject to abuses, it has its compensations 
also. It establishes more permanent, and, therefore, kinder 
relations between capital and labour. /It removes what 
Stuart Mill calls " the widening and embittering feud be- 
tween the class of labour and the class of capital." It draws 
the relation closer between master and servant. It is not 
an engagement for days or weeks, but for life. There is no 
such thing, with slavery, as a labourer for whom nobody 
cares or provides. The most wretched feature, in hireling 
labour, is the isolated miserable creature who has no home, 
no work, no food, and in whom no one is particularly inter- 
ested. This is seen among hirelings only. 
r I do not say that Slavery is the best system of labour, but 
only that it is the best, for the negro, in this country. In 
a nation composed of the same race or similar races, where 
the labourer is intelligent, industrious and provident, money 
wages may be better than subsistence.^ Even under all ad- 



PREFACE. IX. 

vantages, there are great defects in the hireling labour sys- 
tem, for which, hitherto, no Statesmen has discovered an 
adequate remedy. In hireling States there are thousands of 
idlers, trampers, poachers, smugglers, drunkards and thieves^ 
who make theft a profession. There are thousands who 
suiFer for want of food and clothing, from inability to ob- 
tain them. For these two classes — those who will not work, 
and those who cannot — there is no suiBcient provision. 
Among slaves there are no trampers, idlers, smugglers, 
poachers, and none suffer from want. Every one is made to 
work, and no one is permitted to starve. ( Slavery does for 
the negro what European schemers in vain attempt to do for 
the hireling. It secures work and subsistence for all. It 
secures more order and subordination also./ The master is 
a Commissioner of the Poor, on every plantation, to provide 
food, clothing, medicine, houses, for his people. He is a 
police oflGicer to prevent idleness, drunkeness, theft, or dis- 
order. I do not mean by formal appointment of law, but by 
virtue of his relation to his slaves. There is^ therefore, no 
starvation among slaves. There are comparatively few 
crimes. If there are paupers in slave States, they are the 
hirelings of other countries, who have run away from their 
2 



X. PREFACE. 

homes. Pauperism began, with them, when serfage was 
abolished. 

But you must confess, it is said, that Slavery is an evil. 
True enough ! in the same sense in which the hireling's 
hard labour is an evil. But the Poet tells us that there are 
worse things, in the world, than hard labour, '^ withouten that 
would come a heavier bale ;" and, so there are worse things, 
for the negro, than Slavery in a Christian land. Archbishop 
Hughes, in his late visit to Cuba, asked the Africans if they 
wished to return to their native country ; the answer was 
always, no. If the African is happier here, than in his own 
country, can we say that, for him, the establishment of Sla- 
very is an evil ? If the master is contented with his part in 
the system, with what reason can we regard it as an evil, so 
far as he is concerned ? Slaves and Masters are equally 
satisfied. The discontented are those who are neither. 

What more can be required of Slavery, in reference to the 
negro, than has been done ? It has made him, from a sav- 
age, ah orderly and efficient labourer. It supports him in 
comfort and peace. It restrains his vices. It improves his 
mind, morals and manners. It instructs him in Christian 
knowledge. 



PREFACE. XI. 

But the quarrel is with the master, and the design is to 
calumniate and injure him. And why this attack on the 
master ? Who, among its pretended friends, will dare to 
say that they have done for the African race what the slave- 
holders of North America have done, and are doing ? What 
abolitionist has bestowed on the negro the same enduring 
patience, the same useful education, the same care and at- 
tendance ? Who, among them, has done, or given, or sacri- 
ficed as much? Under the master's care, the miserable 
black savage has been fed, clothed, instructed in useful arts, 
and made an important contributor to the business and 
enjoyments of the world. What have the abolitionists done, 
what have they given, for the negro race ? They use the 
slave for the purposes of self-glorification only, indifi"erent 
about his present or future condition. They are ambitious 
to bring about a great social revolution — what its efi'ects may 
be they do not care to inquire. 

All Christians believe that the affairs of the world are 
directed by Providence for wise and good purposes. The 
coming of the negro to North America makes no exception 
to the rule. His transportation was a rude mode of emi- 
gration ; the only practicable one in his case ; not attended 



XU. PREFACE. 

with more wretchedcress than the emigrant ship often exhib- 
its even now, notwithstanding the passenger law. What 
the purpose of his coming is, we may not presume to judge. 
But we can see much good already resulting from it — good 
to the negro, in his improved condition ; to the country 
whose rich fields he has cleared of the forest and made pro- 
ductive in climates unfit for the labour of the white man ; to 
the Continent of Africa in furnishing, as it may ultimately, 
the only means for civilizing its people."^ 

VJhe end of Slavery then would seem to be, present good 
to the slave himself, to the country in which he labours and 
the world at large, and future good to his racej fWhether 
Mr. Clarkson or Lord Carlisle approve or disapprove of the 
mode in which it has pleased divine Providence to bring all 
this about, the event will probably be the same. \ It may 
be doubted whether these gentlemen and their friends could 
have administered the afi'airs of the world more wisely, what- 
ever our opinion may be of their wisdom or benevolence. 
As they will never have the power to try, this must remain 
among the other unsettled questions that perplex the inge- 
nuity of mankind. 

There is, however, a plain, practicable mode in which 



PREFACE. XIU. 

these anti-slavery zealots may confer freedom on thousands, 
year after year, without offence to any party. The plan is 
simple and easy. Let them show their sympathy for the 
negro, not by eloquent speeches, but more eloquent acts ; 
not with sentiment, but with sovereigns. They can buy 
any number of negroes and carry them where they please. 
For such a purpose their government would not object. 
Efficient labourers are wanted in the West Indies. Here is 
a ready way to procure them. They may, in this manner, 
bestow freedom on many of the slaves of America, confer a 
benefit on their Colonies, and gratify their own excited sen- 
sibilities with something more than unprofitable words. 
They feel profoundly for the negro, let them feel to the 
amount of a million a year. This would be better than 
bringing Coolies from Asia, and negroes from Africa, by a 
system of very doubtful character. It would convince the 
world that their sympathy is an honest one, and not the off- 
spring of vanity or arrogance. 

An ingenious lady of South Carolina, in a very admirable 
letter, has made a similar proposal to the Duchess of Suther- 
land. But her Grace is a near relation of the Priest, in the 
fable, who refused a half crown to a supplicant, but was 



XIV. PREFACE. 

ready enough to give him a blessing. The abolitionists all 
belong to this benevolent class of world-menders who are 
willing, at all times, to help every body, if it cost them no 
more than pretty phrases. 

In the remarks made in reference to the condition of the 
hireling in Europe — of England especially — I have no feel- 
ing but compassion for the unfortunate paupers, and intend 
no reproach to their country. I venerate England as the 
great mother of nations, as our teacher in law, literature, 
civil and political liberty. The facts relating to the poverty, 
vice, brutality, and ignorance of the British labourer are 
taken, as may be seen in the notes attached, from English 
authorities — they may be multiplied a hundred fold. In 
adverting to them, I have merely desired to show that there 
is a poor and suffering class in all countries — the richest and 
most civilized not excepted — labourers who get their daily 
bread by daily work, and that the slave is as well provided 
for as any other. The poor, we shall have with us always, 
and whether the poor hireling or the poor slave is most the 
object of pity, or subject of distress, is the only question 
proposed, and the true one at issue. 

It may be thought unnecessary to invite public attention 



PREFACE. XV. 

again to the subject of Slavery. But if the subject be trite, 
it is also of incalculable and unceasing interest. I have en- 
deavoured to diversify the mode, if not the matter, of the 
argument, by throwing the remarks offered into verse. I 
have done so, not only for the reason assigned, but with the 
additional purpose of offering some variety to the poetic 
forms that are almost universally prevalent. The Poetry of 
the day is, for the most part, subtle and transcendental in 
its character. Every sentiment, reflection, or description is 
wrought into elaborate modes of expression, from remote 
and fanciful analogies. The responses of the Muses have 
become as mystical^ and sometimes as obscure, as those of 
more ancient oracles, and disdain the older and homelier 
forms of English verse. 

It has occurred to me that a return to the more sober 
style of an earlier period may not be an unreasonable ex- 
periment on the public taste. The fashion in dress and fur- 
niture, now and then, goes back a century or two, why not 
the fashion in verse ? The school of Dryden and Pope is 
not entirely forgotten. May we not imitate the poetry of 
Queen Anne's time as well as the tables and chairs ? The 
common measure of that period, applied to a didactic sub- 



Xvi. PREFACE. 

ject, may diversify the dishes presented to the public and 
provide for its appetite the same kind of relief that bread 
and butter or beef and pudding would offer after a long in- 
dulgence in more refined and elaborate dishes. The most 
fastidious appetite may tolerate an occasional change of diet, 
and exchange dainties for plainer fare. 



PART I. 



THE ARGUMENT, 



The state of the Hireling- and Slave the same substantially — the condition hard 
labour, the reward subsistence ; the Hireling does not always obtain the reward — 
his miseries, starvation, vices, brutality, expulsion from his country s the trans- 
portation of the Negi-o from Africa to America a blessing to him — instructs him 
in mechanic arts, in agriculture ; the various products of his industry, numerous 
and useful to the whole world ; his improvement not possible in his own country ; 
therefore brought by Providence to this ; Abolitionists denouncers of Providence ; 
their object selfish ; the Negi-o improved by the Master's care only, the Abolition- 
ists do nothing for him ; the superiority of the Slave over the rest of his race ; 
his security from want ; his education, not more defective than that of Hirelings 
in Europe ; his punishments less severe for similar ofifences ; Master's police more 
eflBcient in preserving order and preventing vice, ) 



THE HIRELING AND SLAVE 



PART FIRST. 



Oh, mortal man, that livest here by toil, 

Do not complain of this thy hard estate, 
That, like an emmet, thou must ever moil, 

Is a sad sentence of an ancient date ; 
And, certes, there is for it reason great. 

***** 
Withouten that would come a heavier bale, 
Loose life, unruly passions, and diseases pale. 

Castlk of Indolence. 



How small the choice, from cradle to the grave, 
Between the lot of Hireling and of Slave ! 
To each alike applies the stern decree, 
That man shall labour ; whether bond or free, 
For all that toil, the recompense we claim — 
Food, fire, a home and clothing — is the same.^ 



20 THE 11 I R E L T N G AND SLAVE. 

The manumitted serfs of Europe find 
Unchanged this sad estate of all mankind ; 
What blessing to the churls has freedom proved, 
What want supplied, what task or toil removed ? 
Hard work and scanty wages still their lot, 
In youth o'erlaboured, and in age forgot. 
The mocking boon of freedom they deplore, 
In wants, cares, labours never known before.* 

Free but in name — the slaves of endless toil, 
In Britain still they turn the stubborn soil, 
kSpread on each sea her sails for every mart. 
Ply in her cities every useful art ; 
But vainly may the Peasant toil and groan, 
To speed the plough in furrows not his own ; 
In vain the art is plied, the sail is spread, 
The daily work secures no daily bread '^ 
With hopeless eye, the pauper Hireling sees 
The homeward sail swell proudly to the breeze, 
Rich fabrics, wrought by his unequalled hand, 
Borne by each breeze to every distant land ; 
Unbounded wealth, propitious seasons yield, 

*Panperism began with the abolition of serfage. — West)7iins(er Eeriew. 



THE HIRELING AND SLAVE. 21 

And bounteous harvests crown the smiling field ; 

The streams of wealth that foster pomp and pride, 

No food nor shelter for his wants provide, 

He fails to win, by toil intensely hard, 

The bare subsistence — labour's least reward/^ 

In squalid hut — a kennel for the poor, 
Or noisome cellar, stretched upon the floor, 
His clothing rags, of filthy straw his bed, 
With offal from the gutter daily fed,* 
Thrust out from Nature's board, the Hireling lies — 
No place for him that common board supplies, 
No neighbour helps, no charity attends. 
No philanthropic sympathy befriends ; 
None heed the needy wretch's dying groan, 
He starves unsuccor'd, perishes unknown. 

These are the miseries, such the wants, the cares. 
The bliss that freedom for the serf prepares ; 
A^ain is his skill in each familiar task, 
Capricious Fashion shifts her Protean mask, 
His ancient craft gives work and bread no more,^ 
And want and death sit scowling at his door. 

Close by the hovel, with benignant air, 



22 THE HIRELING AND SLAVE. 

To lordly halls illustrious crowds repair* — 

The Levite tribes of Christian love that show 

No care nor pity for a neighbour's woe ; 

Who meet, each distant evil to deplore, 

But not to clothe or feed their country's poor ; 

They waste no thought on common wants or pains. 

On misery hid in filthy courts and lanes, 

On alms that ask no witnesses but Heaven, 

By pious hands to secret suffering given ; 

Their's the bright sunshine of the public eye, 

The pomp and circumstance of charity, 

The crowded meeting, the repeated cheer, 

The sweet applause of prelate, prince or peer, 

The long report of pious trophies won 

Beyond the rising or the setting sun. 

The mutual smile, the self-complacent air. 

The laboured speech and Pharisaic prayer, 

Thankgivings for their purer hearts and hands. 

Scorn for the publicans of other lands. 

And soft addresses — Sutherland's delight. 

That gentle dames at pious parties write — 

* Exeter Hall, the show phxce of English philanthrophy. 



THE HIRELING AND SLAVE. 

These are the cheats that vanity prepares, 
The soft deceits of her seductive fairs, 
When Exeter expands her portals wide. 
And England's saintly coteries decide 
The proper nostrum for each evil known 
In every land on earth, except their own, 
But never heed the sufferings, wants, or sins, 
At home, where all true charity begins. 

There, unconcerned, the philanthropic eye 
Beholds each phase of human misery ; 
Sees the worn child compelled in mines to slave 
Through narrow seams of coal, a living grave. 
Driven from the breezy hill, the sunny glade, 
By ruthless hearts, the drudge of labour made, 
Unknown the boyish sport, the hour of play, 
Stript of the common boon, the light of day, 
Harnessed like brutes, like brutes to tug and strain 
And drag, on hands and knees, the loaded wain : 
There crammed in huts, in reeking masses thrown. 
All moral sense and decency unknown,*^ 
With no restraint, but what the felon knows, 
With the sole joy, that beer or gin bestows, 



24 THE H 1 11 E L I N (i AND SLAVE. 

To gross excess and brutalizing strife, 
The drunken Hireling dedicates his life :^ 
There women prostitute thems'elves for bread, 
Mothers rejoice to find their infants dead,^ 
Childhood bestows no childish sports or toys, 
Age, neither reverence nor repose enjoys. 
Labour, with hunger, wages ceaseless strife. 
And want and suffering only end with life ; 
In crowded huts, contagious ills assail, 
Insidious typhus and its plagues prevail ;^ 
Gaunt famine prowls around his pauper prey, 
And daily sweeps his ghastly hosts away ; 
Unburied corses taint the summer air, 
And crime and outrage revel with despair.^*^ 

Or — ^from their humble homes and native land 
Forced by a landlord's pitiless command,ii 
Far, in ungenial climes, condemned to roam, 
That sheep may batten in the peasant's home — 
The pauper exiles, from the hill that yields 
One parting look on their abandoned fields. 
Behold with tears, no manhood can restrain, 
Their ancient hamlet level'd with the plain : 



THE HIRELING AND SLAVE. 2D 

They go, a squalid band, unhoused, unfed. 

The sky their only roof, the ditch their bed, 

In crowded ships, new miseries to find, 

More hideous still than those they left behind ; 

Grim Chol'ra thins their ranks, ship fevers sweep 

Their livid tythes of victims to the deep ; 

The sad survivors, on a foreign shore. 

The double loss of homes and friends deplore. 

And beg a stranger's bounty to supply 

The food and shelter that their homes deny. 

Yet homebred misery, such as this, imparts 
Nor grief, nor care, to philanthropic hearts ;^2 
The tear of sympathy forever flows. 
Though not for Saxon or for Celtic woes ; 
The hireling white, without a pitying eye, 
Or helping hand, at home may starve and die ; 
But that the distant black may softlier fare, 
Eat, sleep and play, exempt from toil and care, 
All England's meek philanthropists unite. 
With frantic eagerness, harangue and write, 
By purchased tools, diffuse distrust and hate, 
vSow factions strife, in each dependent State, 
4 



THE HIRELING AND SLAVE. 

Cheat with delusive lies the public mind, 
Invent the cruelties, they fail to find,!^ 
Slander, in pious garb, with prayer and hymn, 
And blast a people's fortune for a whim. 

Cursed by these factious arts, that take the guise 
Of charity, to cheat the good and wise. 
The bright Antilles see, from year to year. 
Their harvests fail, their fortunes disappear ; 
The cane no more its golden treasure yields ; 
Unsightly weeds deform the fertile fields ; 
The negro freeman — thrifty while a slave. 
Becomes a helpless drone or crafty knave. 
Each effort to improve his nature foils ; 
Begs, steals, or sleeps and starves, but never toils, 
For savage sloth, mistakes the freedom won, 
And ends, the mere barbarian he begun. ^^ 

Then, with a face of self-complacent smiles, 
Pleased with the ruin of these hapless Isles, 
And charmed with this cheap way of gaining heaven 
By alms at cost of other countries given — 
Like Nathan's host, who hospitably gave 
His guest a neighbour's lamb, his own to save, 



THE HIRELING AND SLAVE. 27 

Clarkson's meek school beholds with eager eyes, 
In other climes, new fields of glory rise, 
And heedless still of home, its care bestows, 
In other lands, on other negro woes. 

Hesperian lands, beyond the Atlantic wave, 
Home of the poor, and refuge of the brave, 
Who, vainly striving with oppression, fly 
To find new homes, beneath a happier sky ; 
Hither — to quiet vale, or mountain side, 
Where peace and nature undisturbed abide. 
In humble scenes, unwonted lore to learn, 
Patriot and Prince, their banished footsteps turn ; 
The exiled Bourbon finds a place of rest, 
And Kossuth comes, a nation's thankless guest ; 
Here, driven by bigots to their last retreat, 
All forms of faith, a safe asylum meet, 
Each as it wills, untouched by former fears. 
Its prayer repeats, its cherished altar rears. 
Scorned by all tongues, assailed by every hand, 
Alien and outcast from his promised land, 
From Carmel's heights and Sion's holier hill. 
By God's decree, a ceaseless wanderer still, 



28 THE HIRELING AND SLAVE. 

The Hebrew finds, his long oppression past^ 
A grateful home of equal laws at last ; 
The Jesuit enjoys a safe abode, 
Instructs, directs, and fears no penal code, 
And Luther's followers, in their Western home, 
Like Bachmau, scorn the bulls and fires of Rome. 

To exile flying from a perjured State, 
From royal bigotry and Papal hate. 
The Huguenot, among his ancient foes. 
Found shelter here and undisturbed repose ; 
Sad the long look the parting exile gave 
To France receding on the rising wave ! 
Her daisied meads shall smile for him no more. 
Her orchards furnish no autumnal store, 
With memory's eye alone, the wanderer sees. 
The vine clad hills, the old familiar trees, 
The castled steep, the noonday village shade, 
The trim quaint garden where his childhood played ; 
No more he joins the labour of the fields. 
Or shares the joy, the merry vintage yields ; 
Gone are the valley homes, by sparkling streams 
That lonsr shall murmur in the exile's dreams, 



THE HIRELING AND SLAVE. 29 

And temples, where his sires were wont to pray, 
With stern Farel and chivalrous Mornay — 
Scenes with long treasured memories richly fraught, 
Where 8ulj[y counselled, where Coligni fought, 
And Henri's meteor plume in battle shone — 
A beacon light to victory and a throne. 

These all are lost ; but, smiling in the West, 
Hope, still alluring, calms the anxious breast ; 
And dimly rising through the landward haze. 
New forms of beauty court his wistful gaze — 
The level line of strand that brightly shines 
Between the rippling waves and dusky pines, 
A shelving beach that sandy hillocks bound. 
With clumps of palm and fragrant myrtle crowned ; 
Low shores with margins broad of marshy green, 
Bright winding streams, the grassy wastes between ; 
Wood crested islands, that o'erlook the main. 
Like dark hills rising on a verdant plain ; 
Trees, of new beauty, climbing to the skies, 
With various verdure, meet his wondering eyes — 
Gigantic oaks, the monarchs of the wood. 
Whose stooping branches sweep the rising flood. 



30 THE HIRELING AND SLAVE. 

And, robed in solemn draperies of moss, 
To stormy winds, their proud defiance toss ; 
Magnolias bright with glossy leaves and flowers 
Fragrant as Eden in its happiest hours ; 
The gloomy cypress towering to the skies, 
The maple, loveliest in autumnal dyes, 
The palm armorial, with its tufted head. 
Amines over all, in wild luxuriance spread. 
And columned pines, a mystic wood, he sees, 
That sigh and whisper to the passing breeze : 
Here, with determined will and patient toil. 
From wood and swamp he wins the fertile soil ; 
To every hardship, stern endurance brings. 
And builds a fortune, undisturbed by kings. 
Fair fields of wealth and ease his children find, 
Nor heed the homes their fathers left behind. 

Companions of his toil, the axe to wield, 
To guide the plough, to reap the teeming field, 
A sable multitude unceasing pour 
From Niger's banks and Congo's deadly shore ; 
No willing travellers they that widely roam, 
Allured by hope, to seek a happier home, 



THE HIRELING AND SLAVE. 31 

But victims to the trader's thirst for gold, 
Kidnap'd by brothers, and by fathers sold, 
The bondsman born, by native masters reared, 
The captive band, in recent battle spared ; 
For English merchants bought, across the main, 
In British ships, they go for Britain's gain ; 
Forced on her subjects in dependent lands, 
By cruel hearts and avaricious hands, 
New tasks they learn, new masters they obey. 
And bow submissive to the Whiteman's sway. 

But Providence, by his o'eruling will, 
Transmutes to lasting good the transient ill, 
Makes crime itself the means of mercy prove, 
And avarice minister to works of love ; 
In this new home, whate'er the negro's fate — 
More blest his life than in his native State ! 
No mummeries dupe, no Fetish charms affright. 
Nor rites obscene diffuse their moral blight ; 
Idolatries, more hateful than the grave 
With human sacrifice, no more enslave ; 
No savage rule, its hecatomb supplies. 
Of slaves for slaughter, when a master dies :^^ 



32 THE HIRELIxNG AND SLAVE. 

In sloth and error sunk for countless years, 
His race has lived, but light at last appears — 
Celestial light— religion undefiled 
Dawns in the heart of Congo's simple child ; 
Her glorious truths he hears with glad surprise, 
And lifts his views with rapture to the skies ; 
The noblest thoughts that erring mortals know, 
Spring from this source, and in his bosom glow, 
His nature owns the renovating sway. 
And all the old barbarian melts away. 

And now, with sturdy hand and cheerful heart, 
He learns to master every useful art, 
To forge the axe, to mould the rugged share, 
The ship's brave keel for angry waves prepare ; 
The rising wall obeys his plastic will, 
And the loom's fabric owns his ready skill. 

Where once the Indian's keen unerring aim, 
With shafts of reed, transfixed the forest game ; 
Where painted warriors late in ambush stood. 
And midnight war-whoops shook the trembling wood, 
The negro wins, with well directed toil, 
Its various treasure from the virgin soil ; 



THE HIRELING AND SLAVE. 33 

Swept by bis axe, tbe forests pass away, 
Tbe dense swamp opens to tbe ligbt of day ; 
Tbe deep morass of reeds and fetid mud, 
Now dry, now covered by tbe rising flood. 
In squares arranged, by lines of bank and drain, 
Smiles witb ricb barvests of tbe golden grain 
Tbat, wrougbt from ooze by nature's curious art 
To pearly wbiteness, cbeers tbe negro's beart. 
Smokes on tbe master's board, in goodly sbow, 
A mimic pyramid of seeming snow, 
And, borne by commerce to eacb distant sbore, 
Supplies tbe world witb one enjoyment more. 

On upland slopes, witb jungle lately spread, 
Tbe lordly maize uplifts its tasseled bead, 
Broad graceful leaves of waving green appear, 
And sbining tbreads adorn tbe swelling ear — 
Tbe matcbless ear, wbose milky stores impart 
A feast tbat mocks tbe daintiest powers of art. 
To every taste, wbose riper bounty yields, 
A grateful feast, amid a tbousand fields. 
And sent, on mercy's errand, from tbe slave 
To starving birelings, rescues from tbe grave. 
5 



34 THE HIRELING AND SLAVE. 

In broader limits, by the loftier maize, 
The silk-like cotton all its wealth displays ; 
Through forked leaves, in endless rows, unfold 
Gay blossoms tinged with purple dyes and gold 
To suns autumnal bursting pods disclose 
Their fleeces spotless as descending snows ; 
These, a rich freight, a thousand ships receive, 
A thousand looms, with fairy fingers, weave ; 
And hireling multitudes, in other lands,!^ 
Are blest with raiment from the negro's hands. 

Nor these alone they give ; their useful toil 
Lures the rich cane to its adopted soil— 
The luscious cane whose genial sweets diffuse 
More social joys than Hybla's honied dews ; 
Without whose help, no civic feast is made. 
No bridal cake delights ; without whose aid, 
China's enchanting cup itself appears 
To lose its virtue, and no longer cheers ; 
Arabia's fragrant berry idly wastes 
Its pure aroma, on untutored tastes ; 
Limes of delicious scent and golden rind, 
Their pungent treasures unregarded find ; 



THE HIRELING AND SLAVE. 35 

Ices refresh the languid belle no more, 
And their lost comfits, infant worlds deplore. 

The weed's soft influence too, his hands prepare, 
That sootlies the beggar's griefs, the monarch's care, 
Cheers the lone scholar at his midnight work, 
Subdues alike the Russian and the Turk, 
The saint beguiles, the heart of toil revives. 
Ennui itself of half its gloom deprives ; 
In fragrant clouds, involves the learned and great. 
In golden boxes, helps the toils of State, 
And, with strange magic and mysterious charm, 
Hunger can stay, and bores and duns disarm. 

These precious products, in successive years, 
Trained by a master's skill, the negro rears ; 
New life he gives to Europe's busy marts. 
To all the world, new comforts and new arts ; 
Loom, spinner, merchant, from his hands derive 
Their wealth, and myriads by his labour thrive ; 
While slothful millions, hopeless of relief, 
The slaves of pagan priest, and brutal chief, 
Harassed by wars, upon their native shore, 
Still lead the savage life they led before. 



36 THE HIKELIN6 AND SLAVE. 

Instructed thus, and in tlie only school 
Barbarians ever know — a, master's rule, 
The negro learns each civilizing art 
That softens and subdues the savage hearty 
Assumes the tone of those with whom he lives^^^ 
Acquires the habit that refinement gives, 
x\nd slowly learns, but surely, while a slave. 
The lessons that his country never gave. 

There tropic suns with fires unceasing pour 
A baleful radiance on the deadly shore ; 
Foul vapours guard it ; a remorseless host 
Of frenzied fevers sentinel the coast, 
Brood on the stream, the forest depths invade. 
Lurk with alluring slumber in the shade, 
Pursue the stranger that attempts to brave 
Their fatal power, and hurl him to the grave. 

Hence has the negro come, by God's command. 
For wiser teaching, to a foreign land ; 
If they who brought him, were by Mammon driven,. 
Still have they served, blind instruments of heaven ; 
And though the way be rough, the agent stern^ 
No other mode, can human wits discern, 



THE HIRELING AND SLAVE. 37 

No better scheme, may wealth or virtue find,!^ 
To tame and to instruct the negro mind : 
Thus mortal purposes — whate'er their mood, 
Are only means with heaven for working good ; 
And wisest they who labour to fulfill. 
With zeal and hope, the all-directing will, 
And in each change that marks the fleeting year, 
Submissive see God's guiding hand appear. 

Such was the lesson that the Patriarch taught, 
By brothers sold, a slave to Egypt brought. 
When throned in State, Vicegerent of the land. 
He saw around his guilty brethren stand. 
On each pale quivering lip, remorse confest, 
And fear and shame in each repentant breast ; 
No flashing eye rebuked, no scathing word 
Of stern reproof, the trembling brothers heard ; 
Love only glistened in the Prophet's eyes. 
And gently told the purpose of the skies ; 
Grieve not your hearts, he cried^ dismiss your fear. 
It was not you, but heaven that sent me here ; 
His chosen instrument, I come to save 
Pharoah's proud hosts and people from the grave, 



38 THE HIRELING AND SLAVE. 

From Egypt's ample granaries to give 

Their hoarded stores, and bid the dying live ; 

To Israel's race, deliverance to impart, 

And soothe the sorrows of the old man's heart;* 

This Heaven's high end ; to further the design, 

As he commands, your humble task and mine. 

So here, though hid the end from moi^-tal view, 
Heaven's gracious purpose brings the negro too ; 
He comes by God's decree, not chance nor fate, 
Not force, nor fraud, nor grasping schemes of State, 
As Joseph came to Pharoah's storied land, 
Not by a brother's wrath, but Heaven's command ; 
What though humaner Carlisle disapprove, 
Profounder Brougham,! his vote of censure move, 
And Clarkson's friends, with modest ardour, show 
How much more wisely they could rule below, 
Prove, with meek arrogance and humble pride. 
What ills they could remove, what bliss provide, 
Forestall the Saviour's mercy, and devise 
A scheme to wipe all tears from mortal eyes ; 

* " That Old Man, of whom he spake, is he yet alive." 
t " Pronounced Broom from Trent to Tay." 

Byron. 



THE HIRELING AND SLAVE. 39 

Yet time shall vindicate Heaven's humbler plan, 
And justify the ways of God to man. 

But if, though wise and good the purposed end, 
Reproach and scorn the instrument attend ; 
If when the final blessing is contest, 
Still the vile slaver, all the world detest ; 
Arraign the States that sent their ships of late,^^ 
To barter beads and rum for human freight, 
That claimed the right, by treaty, to provide 
Slaves for themselves, and half the world beside. 
And from the Hebrew learned the craft so well, 
Their sable brothers to enslave and sell. 
Shame and remorse o'er whelmed the Hebrew race. 
And penitence was stamped on every face ; 
But modern Slavers, more sagacious grown. 
In all the wrong, can see no part their own ; 
They drag the Negro from his native shore, 
Make him a slave, and then his fate deplore ; 
Sell him in distant countries and when sold, 
Be vile the buyers, but retain the gold : 
Dext'rous to win, in time, by various ways, 
Substantial profit and alluring praise, 



40 THE HIRELING AND SLAVE. 

By turns they grow rapacious and humane, 
And seize alike the honour and the gain : 
Had Joseph's brethren known this modern art, 
And played with skill the philanthropic part, 
How had bold Judah raved in freedom's cause, 
How Levi cursed the foul Egyptian laws. 
And Issachar, in speech or long report,20 
Brayed at the Masters found in Pharoah's court. 
And taught the King himself the sin to hold 
Enslaved the brother they had lately sold, 
Proving that sins of traffic never lie 
On knaves who sell, but on the dupes that buy. 

Such now the maxims of the purer school* 
Of ethics, where the sons of Slavers rule f^ 
No more allowed the Negro to enslave, 
They rail at Masters and for freedom rave, 
Strange modes of morals and of Faith unfold, 
Make newer gospels supersede the old, 
Prove that ungodly Paul connived at sin, 
And holier rites, like Mormon's priest, begin : 

*The purer school of New England, which sets aside the Constitution and the 
Gospel, and substitutes Parker for St. Paul, and Beecher and Garrison for the 
Evangelists. 



THE HIRELING AND SLAVE. 41 

There, chief and teacher, Gerrett Smith appears, 
There Tappan mourns, like Niobe, all tears. 
Carnage and fire, mad Garrison invokes, 
And Hale, with better temper, smirks and jokes ; 
There Giddings, with the negro mania bit, 
Mouths and mistakes his ribaldry for wit. 
His fustian speeches, into market brings, 
And prints and peddles all the paltry things ; 
The pest and scorn of legislative halls 
No rule restrains him, no disgrace appals. 
Kicked from the House, the creature knows no pain. 
But crawls and wriggles to his seat again, 22 
"Wallows with joy in slander's slough once more. 
And plays Thersites, happier than before ; 
Prompt from his seat — when distant riots need 
The Senate's aid — he flies with rail-road speed, 
Harangues, brags, bullies, then resumes his chair, 
And wears his trophies with a hero's air ; 
His colleagues scourge him ; but he shrewdly shows 
A profitable use for whips and blows — 
His friends and voters mark the increasing score. 
Count every lash, and honour him the more. 
6 



42 THE HIRELING AND SLAVE. 

There supple Sumner, with the negro cause, 
Wins the sly game for office and applause ;23 
"What boots it if the negro sink or swim ? 
He gains the Senate, 'tis enough for him, 
What, tho' he blast the fortunes of the State 
With fierce dissension and enduring hate ? 
He makes his speech, his rhetoric displays. 
Trims the neat trope and points the sparkling phrase. 
With well turned period, fosters civil strife. 
And barters for a phrase a nation's life ; 
Sworn into office, his nice feelings loath* 
The dog-like faithfulness that keeps an oath ; 
For rules of right, the silly crowd may bawl. 
His loftier spirit scorns and spurns them all ; 
He heeds nor Court's decree, nor gospel light. 
What Sumner thinks is right, alone is right; 
On this sound maxim Sires and Son proceed. 
Changed in all else, but still in this agreed ; 
The Sires pursued the trade in slaves, the Son 
Curses the trade and mourns the mischief done, 

* " Is thy servant a dog that he should do this thing." Mr. Sumner's answer, 
when asked whether he would obey the Constitution as interpreted by the au- 
thorities of the country. 



THE HIRELING AND SLAVE. 43 

For gold they made the negroes slaves, and he 
For fame and office seeks to set them free : 
Self still the end in which their creeds unite, 
And that which serves the end, is always right. 

There Greeley grieving at a brother's woe, 
Spits, with impartial spite, on friend and foe ;2^ 
His negro griefs and sympathies produce 
No nobler fruits than malice and abuse ; 
To each fanatical delusion prone, 
He damns all creeds and parties but his own, 
Brawls, with hot zeal, for every fool and knave, 
The foreign felon and the skulking slave ; 
Even Chaplin, sneaking from his jail, receives^^ 
The Tribune's sympathy for punished thieves, 
And faction's fiercest rabble always find 
A kindred nature in the Tribune's mind ; 
Ready each furious impulse to obey. 
He raves and ravins like a beast of prey. 
To bloody outrage, stimulates his friends, 
And fires the Capitol, for party ends.^s 

There Seward smiles the sweet perennial smile. 
And talks trim phrases, innocent of guile ; 



44 THE HIRELING AND SLAVE. 

Soft as Couthon, when daily to the knife 
He sent the crowds ensnared in civil strife, 
Women proscribed, with calm and gentle grace. 
And murdered mildly, with a smiling face : 
Parental rule, in youth he bravely spurned, 
And higher law, with boyish wit discerned, 
A village teacher then, his style betrays 
The pedant practice of those learned days, 
When boys, not demagogues, obeyed his nod, 
His higher law, the tear-compelling rod ; 
While, Georgia's guest, a pleasant life he led, 
And Slavery fed him with her savoury bread, 
As now it helps him, in an ampler way. 
With spells and charms that factious hordes obey. 
{ There Stowe, with prostituted pen assails 
One-half her country, in malignant tales ; 
Careless, like TroUope, whether truth she tells, 
And anxious only that the libel sells. 
To slander's mart, she furnishes supplies, 
And feeds its morbid appetite for lies, 
With fictions fashioned by malicious art, 
The venal pen, and the malignant heart, 



THE HIRELING AND SLAVE. 45 

With fact distorted, inference unsound, 

Creatures, in fancy, not in nature found — 

Chaste quadroon virgins^ saints of sable hue, 

Martyrs, than Paul or James, more tried and true. 

Demoniac masters, sentimental slaves. 

Mulatto cavaliers, and Creole knaves — 

Monsters each portrait drawn, each story told ! j 

What then ? The book may bring its weight in gold ; 

Enough ! upon the Jesuit rule she leans, 

That makes the purpose justify the means, 

Concocts the venom, and, with eager gaze. 

To Glascow flies for patron, pence, and praise,^'^ 

And for a slandered country finds rewards 

In smiles, or sneers, of Duchesses and Lords.^^ 

These use the Negro, a convenient tool. 
That yields substantial gain, or party rule. 
Gives, what without it they could never know, 
To Chase, distinction, courtly friends to Stowe, 
To Parker, themes for miracles of rant, 
And e'en to Beecher, mightier gifts of cant ; 
The Master's task has been the Black to train. 
To form his mind; his passions to restrain. 



46 THE HIRELING AND SLAVE. 

With anxious care and patience to impart 
The knowledge that subdues the savage heart, 
To give the Gospel lessons that control 
The rudest breast, and renovate the soul — 
Who does J or gives as much, of all who raise 
Their sland'rous cry for foreign pence or praise ; 
Of all the knaves who clamour and declaim 
For party power, or philanthropic fame, 
Or use the Negro's fancied wrongs and woes. 
As pretty themes for maudlin verse or prose ? 
( Taught by the Master's efforts, by his care, 
Fed, clothed, protected, many a patient year, 
From trivial numbers now to millions grown. 
With all the Whiteman's useful arts their own. 
Industrious, docile, skilled in wood and field, 
To guide the plough, the sturdy axe to wield, 
The Negroes schooled by Slavery embrace 
The highest portion of the Negro race ; 
And none the savage native will compare, 
Of barbarous Guinea, with its oiFspring here. 

If bound to daily labour while he lives. 
His is the daily bread that labour gives ; 



THE HIRELING AND SLAVE. 47 

Guarded from want, from beggary secure, 

He never feels what Hireling crowds endure, 

Nor knows, like them, in hopeless want to crave, 

For wife and child, the comforts of the slave. 

Or the sad thought that, when about to die, 

He leaves them to the world's cold charity. 

And sees them forced to seek the poor-house door — 

The last, sad, hated refuge of the poor.-^ 

Still Europe's pious coteries sigh and groan, 
Note our defects, yet never see their own, 
Grieve that the Slave is never taught to write, 
And reads no better than the Hireling White ; 
Do their own ploughmen no instruction lack. 
Have whiter clowns more knowledge than the Black ? 
Has the French peasant, or the German boor, 
Of learning's treasure any larger store ; 
Have Ireland's millions, flying from the rule 
Of those who censure, ever known a school ? 
A thousand years, and Europe's wealth impart 
No means to mend the Hireling's head or heart ; 
They build no schools to teach the pauper White, 
Their toiling millions neither read nor write ; 



48 THE niRELING AND SLAVE. 

Whence then the idle clamour when they rave 
For schools and teachers for the distant Slave 1^^ 

And why the soft regret, the coarse attack, 
If Justice punish the offending Black ? 
Are Whites not punished ? — When Utopian times 
Shall drive from Earth all miseries and crimes, 
And teach the World the art to do without 
The cat, the gauntlet, and the brutal knout. 
Banish the halter, galley, jails and chains. 
And strip the law of penalties and pains ; 
Here too, offence and wrong they may prevent. 
And Slaves, with Hirelings, need no punishment :^^ 
'Till then, what lash of Slavery will compare 
With the dread scourge that British soldiers bear ? 
What gentle rule, in Britain's Isle, prevails, 
How rare her use of gibbets, stocks and jails ! 
How much humaner, than a master's whip, 
Her penal colony and convict ship ! 
Whose code of law can darker pages show, 
Where blood for smaller misdemeanors flow ? 
The trifling theft or trespass that demands. 
For slaves, light penance from a master's hands, 



THE IIIRELING AND SLAVE. 49 

Where Europe's milder punishments are known, 
Incur the penalty of death alone. 

And yet the Master's lighter rule ensures 
More order than the sternest code secures ; 
No mobs of factious workmen gather here, 
No strikes we dread, no lawless riots fear ; 
Nuns, from their convent driven, at midnight fly, 
Churches, in flames, ask vengeance from the sky, 
Seditious schemes in bloody tumults end, 
Parsons incite, and Senators defend. 
But not where Slaves their easy labours ply, 
Safe from the snare, beneath a Master's eye ; 
In useful tasks engaged, employed their time, 
Untempted by the demagogue to crime. 
Secure they toil, uncursed their peaceful life, 
"With freedom's hungry broils and wasteful strife,*' 
No want to goad, no faction to deplore. 
The Slave escapes the perils of the poor. 

* The late Preston strike lost to the parties — masters and workmen — over two 
millions of dollars, and ended where it began. 



PART II. 



THE ARGUMENT 



The Hireling in Europe willing to exchange for the security of the Slave, his 
own precarious subsistence ; the comforts of the Slave ; his religious enjoy- 
ments ; his sports and amusements ; extinction of the Indian tribes in the 
country now inhabited by the Negro; certainty that the Negro would also 
disappear if not protected by Slavery ; this fate speedy in temperate climates— 
as certain, if slower, in tropical countries, habitable by whites ; awaits the 
Blacks in Hay ti ; folly of exchanging the comfort and security of the Slave for 
a certain evil or problematical good ; purposes of African Slavery— the cultiva- 
tion of tropical countries, the improvement of the Negro, the civilization of 
Africa; duty of the Master, to govern with vigour, but kindness, to regard his 
part of the work as also assigned by Providence, and to perform it faithfully. 



THE HIRELING AND SLAVE 



PART SECOND, 



See yonder poor o'erlaboured wight, 

So abject, ineau and vile, 
Who begs a brother of the Earth 

To give him leave to toil, 
And see his lordly fellow-worm 

The poor petition spurn, 
Unmindful tho' a weeping wife 

And helpless offspring mourn. 

Burns. 



Where Hireling millions toil, in doubt and fear, 
For food and clothing, all the weary year, 
Content and grateful, if their Masters give 
The boon they humbly beg — to work and live ; 
AVhile dreamers task their idle wits to find, 
A short hand method to enrich mankind, 



52 THE HIRELING AND SLAVE. 

And Fourier's scheme and Owen's deep device, 
The drooping hearts of list'ning crowds entice 
With rising wages, and decreasing toil, 
With bounteous crops from ill-attended soil : 
If, while the anxious multitudes appear, 
Now glad with hope, now yielding to despair, 
A Seraph form, descending from the skies, 
In mercy sent, should meet their wond'ring eyes. 
And smiling, promise all the good they crave, 
The homes, the food, the clothing of the Slave , 
Restraint from vice, exemption from the cares 
The pauper Hireling ever feels or fears ; 
And, at their death, these blessings to renew, 
That wives and children may enjoy them too. 
That, when disease or age their strength impairs. 
Subsistence and a home should still be their's ; 
What wonder would the promised boon impart, 
What grateful rapture swell the Peasant's heart ; 
How freely would the hungry list'ners give 
A life-long labour, thus secure to live ! 

And yet the life, so unassailed by care. 
So blest with moderate work, w^ith ample fare, 



THE HIRELING AND SLAVE. 53 

With all the good the pauper Hireling needs, 

The happier Slave on each plantation leads ; 

Safe from harassing doubts and annual fears, 

He dreads no famine, in unfruitful years; 

If harvests fail from inauspicious skies. 

The Master's providence his food supplies ; 

No paupers perish here for want of bread, 

Or lingering live, by foreign bounty fed ; 

No exiled trains of homeless peasants go. 

In distant climes, to tell their tales of woe ; 

Far other fortune, free from care and strife, 

For work, or bread, attends the Negro's life. 

And Christian Slaves may challenge as their own, 

The blessings claimed in fabled states alone — 

The cabin home, not comfortless, though rude, 

Light daily labour, and abundant food, 

The sturdy health, that temperate habits yield. 

The cheerful song, that rings in every field. 

The long, loud laugh, that freemen seldom share. 

Heaven's boon to bosoms unapproached by care. 

And boisterous jest and humour unrefined. 

That leave, though rough, no painful sting behind; 



54 THE HIRELING AND SLAVE. 

While, nestling near, to bless tlieir humble lot, 
Warm social joys surround the Negro's cot, 
The evening dance its merriment imparts, 
Love, with his rapture, fills their youthful hearts. 
And placid age, the task of labour done. 
Enjoys the summer shade, the winter's sun. 
And, as through life no pauper want he knows, 
Laments no poorhouse penance at its close. 

His too the Christian privilege to share 
The weekly festival of praise and prayer ; 
For him the Sabbath shines with holier light. 
The air is balmier, and the sky more bright ; 
Winter's brief suns with warmer radiance glow. 
With softer breath the gales of autumn blow. 
Spring with new flowers more richly strews the ground. 
And summer spreads a fresher verdure round ; 
The early shower is past ; the joyous breeze 
Shakes patt'ring rain drops from the rustling trees. 
And with the sun, the fragrant offerings rise. 
From Nature's censers to the bounteous skies ; 
With cheerful aspect, in his best array, 
To the far forest church he takes his way ; 



THE HIRELING AND SLAVE. 55 

With kind salute the passing neighbour meets, 
With awkward grace the morning traveller greets, 
And joined by crowds, that gather as he goes, 
Seeks the calm joy the Sabbath morn bestows. 

There no proud temples to devotion rise. 
With marble domes that emulate the skies ; 
But bosomed in primeval trees that spread 
Their limbs o'er mouldering mansions of the dead. 
Moss cinctured oaks and solemn pines between, 
Of modest wood, the house of God is seen. 
By shaded springs, that from the sloping land 
Bubble and sparkle through the silver sand. 
Where high o'er arching laurel blossoms blow. 
Where fragrant bays breathe kindred sweets below, 
And elm and ash their blended arms entwine 
With the bright foliage of the mantling vine : 
In quiet chat, before the hour of prayer, 
Masters and Slaves in scattered groups appear ; 
Loosed from the carriage, in the shades around, 
Impatient horses neigh and paw the ground ; 
No city discords break the silence here. 
No sounds unmeet offend the listener's ear ; 



56 THE HIRELING AND SLAVE. 

But rural melodies of flocks and birds, 
The lowing, far and faint, of distant herds. 
The mocking-bird, with minstrel pride elate, 
The partridge whistling for its absent mate, 
The thrush's soft solitary notes prolong, 
Bold, merry blackbirds swell the general song. 
And cautious crows their harsher voices join, 
In concert cawing, from the loftiest pine. 

When now the Pastor lifts his earnest eyes, 
And hands outstretched, a suppliant to the skies ; 
No rites of pomp or pride beguile the soul, 
No organs peal, no clouds of incense roll. 
But, line by line, untutored voices raise. 
Like the wild birds, their simple notes of praise. 
And hearts of love, with true devotion bring, 
Incense more pure to Heaven's eternal King, 
On glorious themes their humble thoughts employ. 
And rise transported with no earthly joy ; 
The blessing said, the service o'er, again 
Their swelling voices raise the sacred strain ; 
Lingering, they love to sing of Jordan's shore. 
Where sorrows cease, and toil is known no more.-'^^ 



THE IIIRELINa AND SLAVE. 57 

Not toil alone, the fortune of the Slave ! 
He shares the sport and spoils of wood and wave ; 
Through the dense swamp, where wilder forests rise 
In tangled masses, and shut out the skies, 
Where the dark covert shuns the noontide blaze. 
With agile step, he threads the pathless maze, 
The hollow gum, with searching eye explores, 
Traces the bee to its delicious stores. 
The ringing axe with ceaseless vigour plies, 
And from the hollow scoops the luscious prize. 

When autumn's parting days grow cold and brief, 
Light hoar frosts sparkle on the fallen leaf, 
The breezeless pines, at rest, no longer sigh, 
And pearl-like clouds hang shining in the sky ; 
When to the homestead flocks and herds incline. 
Sonorous conchs recall the rambling swine, 
And from the field, the low descending sun 
Sends home the Slave, his fleecy harvest done ; 
In field and wood he hunts the frequent hare, 
The wild hog chases to the forest lair. 
Entraps the gobbler ; with persuasive smoke 
Beguiles the 'possum from the hollow oak ;-^'* 



58 THE HIRELING AND SLAVE. 

On tlie tall pine tree's topmost bough espies 

The crafty coon — a more important prize — 

Detects the dodger's peering eyes that glow 

With fire reflected from the blaze below, 

Hews down the branchless trunk with practised hand, 

And drives the climber from his nodding stand ; 

Downward, at last, he springs, with crashing sound, 

Where Jet and Pincher seize him on the ground. 

Yields to the hunter the contested spoil;, 

And pays, with feast and fur, the evening toil. 

When calm skies glitter with the starry light, 
The boatman tries the fortune of the night, 
Launches the light canoe ; the torch's beam 
Gleams like a gliding meteor on the stream ; 
Along the shore, the flick'ring fire-light steals, 
Shines through the wave, and all its wealth reveals. 
The spotted trout its mottled side displays, 
Swift shoals of mullet flash beneath the blaze ; 
He marks their rippling course ; through cold and wet, 
Lashes the sparkling tide with dext'rous net ;* 
With poised harpoon the bass or drum assails, 

*" Latum fuiida jam vcrbcrat amncm." 



THE HIRELING AND SLAVE. 59 

And strikes the barb through silv'ry tinted scales. 

When on the sandy shore, in early June, 
With lustrous glory looks the full orbed moon, 
And^ spreading from the eye, her pearly light 
Shines o'er the billows tremulously bright, 
When swelling tides — the winds and waves at rest — 
Tempt the shy turtle to her simple nest, 
That scooped in sand, and hid with curious art, 
Wait the quick life that summer's suns impart. 
The Negro's watchful step the beach explores. 
In the loose sand detects its secret stores, 
Pursues the fugitive's slow, cumbrous flight, 
And wins his crowning trophy from the night. 

No need has he the poacher's doom to fear, 
Himself ensnared^ while sedulous to snare ; 
To him no keeper closes field or wood, 
Nor laws forbid the riches of the flood ; 
Shrimp, oyster, mullet, an Apician feast. 
Fit for the taste of pampered Prince or Priest, 
He freely takes, nor dreads the partial law 
That seeks the boon of Nature to withdraw 
From common use, for Fortune's sated son. 



60 THE HIRELING AND SLAVE, 

An idler's pastime for his rod or gun, 

Kept for his sport, with care preserved and fed, 

While hungry thousands daily cry for bread. 

Still braver sports are his, when April showers 
Impart new fragrance to the joyous flowers. 
When jasmines, through the woods, to early spring, 
In golden cups, their dewy incense bring, 
White dog-wood blossoms sparkle through the trees, ^^ 
The fragrant grape perfumes the morning breeze. 
And with the warmer sun and balmier air. 
The finny myriads to their haunts repair ; 
Such sports are his — with boundless jest and glee. 
Where bold Port Royal spreads its mimic sea ; 
Bright in the North — the length'ning bay and sky 
Blent into one — its shining waters lie. 
And southward breaking on the shelving shore, 
Meet the sea wave and swell its endless roar, 
On either hand gay groups of islands show 
Their charms reflected in the stream below — 
No richer fields, no lovelier isles than these, 
No happier homes, the weary traveller sees ! 
Hilton's long shore on Ocean's breast reclines, 



THE HIRELING AND SLAVE. Gl 

And rears her headland of majestic pines ; 

Fenced from the billows by her subject isles, 

Touched by the rising sun^ St. Helen smiles, 

With brightness borrowed from the morning ray. 

Her sand hills shine across the subject bay ; 

Dawes centred lies in marshes broad and green, 

Beaufort's dark woods adorn the varying scene. 

And Lemon's oak, in single grandeur, rears 

His form — a giant of a thousand years — 

The sole survivor of a Titan race, 

A living monument, he marks the place 

Where dauntless hearts, Ribault's ill-fated band, 

Claimed, as their own, the wide, imperial land f^ 

By wise Coligni ordered to explore, 

For peaceful homes, this new discovered shore. 

They mark each quiet nook, each grassy glade. 

And spreading oak, of broad, inviting shade, 

In endless woods, with eager pleasure roam, 

And hail with joy the promised western home ; 

While chiefs and kings, the wondrous stranger greet, 

And lay their presents at the Whiteman's feet ; 

But vain the hope ! To this sequestered place 



62 THE HIRELING AND SLAVE. 

Their ancient foes, the fierce Iberian race, 
Through miry swamps and pathless thickets steal, 
Murder the heretic, with frantic zeal. 
Pollute, with Christian blood, the virgin sod, 
And prove, by massacre, their love of God. 
With better fortune, near the blood-stained grave, 
Advent' rous Britons, braving wind and wave, 
Guided by Sayle, in merry Charles's reign. 
Sought wealth and empire on these shores again, 
Weary of storm and calm, of seas and skies. 
They watched the rising land with rapturous eyes, 
Trod with delight the fragrance breathing strand, 
And drew new life and vigour from the land. 
But, warned by spectral visions of the dead. 
From the broad bay and peerless Islands fled, 
To safer fields their feeble fortunes bore. 
And built their State on Ashley's sheltered shore. 

Far in the West, where sunset's parting beam 
With purple splendours tints the glassy stream, 
Pinckney's bright island home yet bears the name,^ 
Of one whose virtues share his country's fame, 

* The country seat of Gen. C. C. Pinckney. 



THE HIRELING AND SLAVE. 63 

A soldier proved, without reproach or fear, 
A statesman skilled new commonwealths to rear, 
To field and forum equally inured, 
What arms had won, his eloquence secured ; 
With stern resolve his country to* defend, 
He spurned the arrogance of foe and friend ; 
War crowned him with the laurels of the brave, 
And civic garlands peace as amply gave ; 
With care he watched the anarchy that waits, 
In ambushed strength, to crush revolting States, 
And strove with zeal^ all jealous fears above, 
To bind them fast, by ties of social love : 
In this alone his generous spirit saw 
For peace, security, and rule for law. 
Safety from border strife, from foreign foe, 
And the long ills that feeble nations know. 

Here, every work of patriot duty wrought, 
His peaceful shades the veteran Statesman sought. 
With ready anecdote, the livelong day. 
Or playful wit, he charmed the grave and gay, 
And taught the art to brighten and refine, 
With cheerful wisdom, life's unmarked decline. 



64 THE HIRELING AND SLAVE. 

With ready sympathy, he loved to view 
The April sports, and to partake them too, 
To watch — at early dawn, when skies were bright, 
And dews stood sparkling in the early light, 
On leaf and flower — the frequent sail and oar 
Launched on the bay, from every creek and shore ; 
Careful the favourite rock or shoal to reach. 
They trace their landmarks on the distant beach ; 
With shouts and taunts the daily race is run, 
The sail is furled, the wonted station won, 
The line prepared, the hook with caution tried, 
The various bait with artful care applied — 
All eager — slaves and masters — to behold 
Their annual prize, with glittering scales of gold, 
To feel the line through glowing fingers glide. 
Watch where the victim shows his burnished side. 
With patient skill his various efforts foil. 
And seize, in triumph, on the conquered spoil; 
Then boast and jest exultingly proclaim 
New trophies added to the victor's fame ; 
And the broad grin and shining face declare. 
How true a joy the Negro sportsmen share. 



THE II I R E L I N Cr AND SLAVE. 65 

Now, with declining day, on every hand, 
The loaded boats turn slowly to the land, 
Spread the light sail, or ply the bending oar, 
And seek warm shelter on the wooded shore ; 
The boat song rising with its wonted charm, 
V Imparts new vigour to each sturdy arm ; 

Hamlet and camp attend the well-known note,* 
Expect the spoil, and hail the welcome boat. 

With sharpened appetite, the joyous crews 
Prolong their feast of savoury steaks and stews. 
And join, where camp fires glimmer through the trees, 
The light laugh floating on the western breeze ; 
Describe the fish and fortunes of the day, 
How sly the bite, how beautiful the play, 
Tell, with grave face, the superstitious charm 
That wrought the fisherman success or harm. 
Recount the feats of fishing or of fun. 
In other days, by older sportsmen done, 
In dreams renew their triumphs through the night. 
And wake to others with the dawning light. 

Not Marshfield's master, in the palmiest day,-"^ 

*The fishermen from a distance encamp near the plantations among the trees. 



THE IIIUELING AND SLAVE. 

For feast or fish, could readier skill display, 
Chowder expound, with more consummate art. 
At the full trencher play a manlier part, 
Or, with heart freer from intrusive care, 
The sport participate and feast prepare. 

Not Elliott, early trained, with easy skill, 
Old Walton's various offices to fill, 
The sport to lead, the willing ear beguile, 
And charm with gay felicity of style, 
The straining line with nicer art employs,, 
Or the brave sport with keener zest enjoys. 

But if the wayward fish refuse the bait, 
If floating lines, abated tides await, 
Its trick and fun, the idle moment brings, 
From boat to boat light-hearted laughter rings ; 
The novice starts alarmed, his slumber broke 
By the sly veteran's oft repeated joke. 
Or Dupe and Jester, stretched in dreamless sleep, 
Lie rocked by billows rolling from the deep. 
Fanned by the southern breeze, that on its wings. 
From the blue sea refreshing coolness brings : 
Now roused by hunger, every hand explores 



THE IIIRELIXG AND SLAVE. 67 

The well-filled box, and culls its ample stores — 
Fish from the morning feast ; the bounteous maize, 
Of grist or flour, an ampler dish displays ; 
With appetite unsated to the last, 
They feast, and kings may covet the repast. 

But other scenes attract the Master's gaze. 
Amuse, or steal his thoughts to other days, 
When on these streams the Indian's swift canoe. 
Light as the gull, to sport or battle flew ; 
Light as the noisy flocks, that meet the e^e. 
On restless pinions flitting gaily by ; 
In idle sport, they chase and are pursued. 
With sudden dart surprise their minnow food^ 
The rising diver watch, the well-earned prize 
Snatch from his bill, with sharp exulting cries. 
Or in the stream their glossy plumage lave, 
And sit with graceful lightness on the wave. 

Aloft the fish-hawk wings his wary way, 
Stops, turns, and watches the incautious prey, 
Quick as the fish attracts his piercing eye, 
With fluttered wings a moment poised on high. 
Headlong he plunges with unerring aim. 



68 THE HIRELING AND SLATE. 

In iron claws secures the struggling game, 
Upward again his joyous flight resumes, 
And shakes the water from his ruffled plumes. 

Yain is his joy or skill ! On Eddings' shores 
The eagle's patient watch the scene explores ; 
From the tall blasted pine, prepared to spring. 
With neck outstretched and half unfolded wing. 
He sees the plunging hawk, the struggling prey. 
Cleaves, like the lightning flash, the liquid way ; 
The hawk perceives the dread aerial king, 
Quails at the shadow of the broad dark wing. 
Ceases in circling sweeps to scale the sky, 
And drops his treasure with indignant cry ;^ 
Swooping with matchless power and rushing sound, 
Before the falling prize can reach the ground. 
In graceful curve, the eagle meets his spoil, 
The plundered product of another's toil. 
Regains his perch that far o'erlooks the main, 
Feasts with fierce eye and holds his watch again. 

So the mailed Baron, with the dawning light, 
Watched the broad valley from his castled height ; 

* So Aiulubon interprets the cry to mean. 



THE HIRELING AND SLAVE. 69 

If far below, dense clouds of mist between, 
The passing Burgher's flocks and herds were seen, 
The merchant troop, from orient climes returned. 
With pearls and gold by toil and peril earned, 
Down swooped the pennon from the feudal hold. 
And clutched the flocks, the costly gems and gold, 
Safe on the rocky perch, in wassail rude. 
Spent the long night, and watch at morn renewed. 

Bright streams and isles, how memory loves to trace 
Its boyish sports in each familiar place, 
By wood and wave with joy renewed to dwell, 
And live again the life once loved so well : 
Still, with the scenes, old faces reappear. 
Voices, long silent, meet the musing ear. 
And many a hamlet gleaming on the shore, 
Recalls a friend whose sports and toils are o'er ; 
Can ceaseless cares for power and place impart 
Scenes such as these to charm and mend the heart ? 
The blue arch resting on the distant trees, 
The bright wave curling to the ocean breeze, 
The dewy woods that greet the rising sun, 
The clouds that close the golden circuit run, 



70 THE HIRELING AND SLA YE. 

Rolled in bright masses of a thousand dyes, 
A pomp and glory in the western Bides. 
Here every flower that gems the forest sod, 
May guide the heart from Nature to its God, 
And higher hopes and purer joys bestow, 
Than the poor slaves of faction ever know, 
When demagogues have won, with brazen throat, 
The loudest cheer and most triumphant vote. 
Even when not party nor a people's voice. 
But Providence himself hath made the choice. 
And lifts the man, whom worth and wisdom grace, 
To sit in Liberty's supremest place ; 
Though loved and honoured in a nation's eyes. 
Though faction's self confess him just and wise ; 
Still the calm home, where peace and virtue dwell, 
Charms with a silent, but a mightier spell ; 
And Fillmore left, without a sigh, the toys 
Of State for homelier but serener joys. 
Faithful, like \yashington, to order's cause. 
And prompt, like him, to vindicate her laws. 
Like him, he looked with still reverted eye, 
To happier scenes than ofiice can suj^j^ly. 



THE II I II E L I N Cr AND SLAVE. 71 

Turned from the noisy Hall, the coarse debate, 

The curse of patronage and frauds of State, 

The caucus juggler and his pliant tool, 

The slaves of party and its tyrant rule, 

The knavish arts that demagogues employ. 

Lies that supplant and whispers that destroy ; 

Whose work would shame the honest hand of toil. 

Whose love of country means the love of spoil. 

Who, for their party, wrong their nearest friends, 

Betray that party for their private ends, 

Pursue with subtle craft, by fraud or force, 

The Patriot-irade — the scoundrel's last resource ; 

Deplore the people's wrong, inflame their rage, 

In factious brawls, for fancied ills engage, 

Hot with unmeasured zeal — 'till office fills 

Their itching palms, and cures all wrongs and ills ; 

From these he turned — from falsehood, craft and strife. 

To the pure joys that wait on private life 

In scenes like this, where forest, stream and sky 

Speak in charmed accents to the gazer's eye, 

And Nature's voiceless eloquence imparts 

Her hopes and joys to renovated hearts. 



72 THE HIRELING AND SLAVE. 

And even here if Sorrow find her way, 
If, as they must, these hopes and joys decay, 
Nor talents guard, nor charms of temper save. 
Nor virtues .shield the loved one from the grave ; 
While worldly turmoil wrings the mourner's heart, 
Home's quiet scenes a soothing balm impart, 
Faith here has room to spread her Heavenward wing, 
Hope strips the baffled conqueror of his sting, 
The heart communes with spirits from above. 
And for a mortal's, finds an angel's love. 
By wood and stream, where twilight walks beguile. 
Hears the soft voice and sees the undying smile. 

Lured by the woods and streams and April skies. 
To the long past the dreamer, Memor}^, flies, 
And backward as she turns her thoughtful view, 
The vanished Indian seems to live anew ; 
Low voices whisper round, from stream and bay. 
The mournful tale of nations past away; 
And names, like spirits of the buried race, 
Of plaintive sweetness, tell their dwelling place : 
On every isle, in every field and wood, 
Shells show, in heaps, where once the wigwams stood 



T'lIE HIRELING AND SLAVE. 73 

Spear points of flint and arrow heads are found, 
Fragments of pottery strew the haunted ground, 
And barrows broad, with ancient trees o'erspread, 
Still hold the relics of the warrior dead — 
Relics of Tribes and Nations that of yore 
Welcomed the Saxon stranger to the shore ; 
Then masters of the land, with matchless skill, 
They chased the deer, by valley, plain and hill, 
Through gloomy forests, sought a nobler game, 
And won, with pride, the warrior's sterner fame ; 
Where moose and elk, their fragrant forest home 
In wastes of fir by Madawaska roam ; 
Where, on his breast, Potomac loves to trace 
The Patriot's home and hallowed resting-place ; 
In quiet beauty, where Saluda flows ; 
Catawba rushes from his mountain snows ; 
Through the lost Eden of the Cherokee, 
Where Tallapoosa seeks the Southern sea ; 
Where slow Oscilla winds his gentler tides, 
By cypress shadow where Suwannee glides ; 
Where crowned with woods, the Apalachians rise. 
The Blue Ridge blends its summit with the skies, 
10 



74 THE HIRELING AND SLAVE. 

Long rolling waves break foaming from the deep, 
And Erie's ocean thunders down the steep ; 
Lords of the lake, the shore, the stream, the wood, 
Painted and plumed, the giant warriors stood. 
With presents filled the feeble stranger's hand, 
And hailed his coming to the Redman's land ; 
Now from these homes expelled, in seeming rest,' 
A hopeless remnant, cowering in the West, 
Thej linger till the surge of millions come 
To sweep them headlong from the transient home : 
Vainly the gentle wish, the gen'rous strive 
To save the helpless wanderers that survive;, 
Lure them from sloth, from ignorance and strife. 
And make them learn the social arts of life ; 
In vain, with adverse will, the Indian tries 
To win the bread that toil or art supplies, 
Like their wild woods, before the Saxon's sway, 
The native Nations fall and waste away ; 
The same their doom, where wars the forest sweep. 
Like winter torrents rushing to the deep. 
Or where the tides of peace more slowly eat 
As sure a passage to their last retreat ; 



THE HIRELING AND SLAVE. 75 

Where'er their lot, with Puritan or Friend, 
Friendship and hatred bring one common end ; 
Chieftain and brave have vanished from the scene, 
And Memory hardly tells that they have been. 

Such, too, the fate the Negro must deplore, 
If Slavery guard his subject race no more, 
If by weak friends or vicious counsels led 
To change his blessings for the Hireling's bread. 
Cheated by idle hopes, he vainly tries 
To tempt the fortune that his strength denies. 
Quits the safe port, deserts the peacefial shore, 
An unknown sea of peril to explore ; 
Hard the long toil the Hireling bread to gain. 
Slight is his power, life's battle to maintain ; 
And war's swift sword, or peace, with slow decay, 
Must, like the Indian's, sweep his race away.^^ 

Swift is the doom, where temperate climes invite 
To fruitful soils the labours of the white ; 
Where no foul vapour taints the morning air, 
And bracing frosts, his wasted strength repair : 
Where Europe's hordes, from home and hunger fled, 
Task every nerve and ready art for bread, 



76 THE HIRELING AND SLAVE. 

Rush to each work, the calls for labour yield, 
And bear no sable brother in the field ; 
There in suburban dens and human sties, 
In foul excesses sunk, the negro lies ; 
A moral pestilence to taint and stain. 
His life a curse, his death a social gain. 
Debased, despised, the northern Pariah knows 
He shares no good that Liberty bestows ; 
Spurned from her gifts, with each successive year, 
In drunken want, his numbers disappear. 

In tropic climes, where Nature's bounteous hand 
Pours ceaseless blessings on the teeming land. 
And, with the fruits and flowers that she bestows, 
Fierce fevers lurk, the white man's deadliest foes. 
More safe the negro seems — his sluggish race 
Luxuriates in the hot congenial place, — 
A Lotus bearing paradise that flows 
With all the lazy joys, the negro knows, 
Where all day long, beneath the Tamarisk shade. 
Stretched on his back, in scanty garb arrayed, 
With sated appetite, in sensual ease. 
Fanned into slumber by the listless breeze, 



THE HIRELING AND SLAVE. 

A careless life of indolence he lives, 
Fed by the fruits perpetual Summer gives : 
Yet here, unguided by Caucasian skill, 
Unurged to labour by a master will. 
Abandoned to his native sloth that knows 
No state so blest as undisturbed repose, 
With no restraint, that struggling virtue needs, 
With every vice, that lazy pleasure breeds. 
His life, to savage indolence he yields. 
To weeds and jungle, the deserted fields; 
Where once the mansion rose, the garden smiled, 
Where art and labour tamed the tropic wild, 
Theis^ hard wrought trophies sink into decay, 
The wilderness again resumes its sway, 
Rank week^ displace the labours of the spade. 
And reptiles crawl where joyous infants played. ^^ 
Such now the negro's life, such wrecks appear 
Of former affluence, industry, and care, 
On Hayti's plains, where once her golden stores 
Gave their best commerce to the Gallic shores ; 
While yet no foul revolt or servile strife 
Marred the calm tenor of the negro's life, 



78 THE HIRELING AND SLAVE. 

And lured his mind — with mimickry elate 
Of titled nobles and Imperial state, — 
From useful labour, savage wars to wage, 
To glut with massacre, a demon's rage, 
Forget the Christian, in the pagan rite, 
And serve a negro master for a white.^*^ 

But even in climes like this, a fated power, 
In patient ambush, waits the coming hours'*! 
When from their hovels, war and want shall drive 
New hordes of hunger from the Eastern hive, 
And Europe's multitudes again demand 
Its boundless riches, from the willing land 
' That now, in vain luxuriance, idly lies, 
And yields no harvest to the genial skies ; 
Then shall the Ape of Empire meet its doom, 
Black peer and Prince their ancient tasks resume, 
Renounce the mimickries of war and state, 
And useful labour strive to emulate. 

Why peril then the negro's humble joys, 
Why make him free, if freedom but destroys ? 
Why take him from the lot that now bestows 
More than the negro elsewhere ever knows — 



THE HIRELING AND SLAVE. 79 

Home, clothing, food, light labour, and content, 
Childhood in play, and age, in quiet spent, 
To vex his life with factious stride and broil. 
To crush his nature with unusual toil, 
To see him, like the Indian tribes, a prey 
To war or peace, destruction or decay? 

Not such his fate, Philanthropy replies, 
His horoscope is drawn from happier skies ; 
Bonds soon shall cease to be the negro's lot. 
Mere race distinctions shall be all forgot, 
And White and Black amalgamating, prove 
The charms, that Stone admires, of mongrel love,^^ 
Erase the lines, that erring nature draws 
To sever races, and rescind her laws ; 
Reverse the rules, that stupid farmers heed, 
And mend the higher by the coarser breed ; 
Or prove the world's long history false, and find 
Wit, wisdom, genius in the negro mind ; 
If not intended thus, in time, to blend 
In one bronze coloured breed — what then the end ? 
What purposed good, like that which brought before, 
The Hebrew Seer to Nile's mysterious shore, 



80 THE HIRELING AND SLAVE. 

Brings the dusk children of the burning zone 
To toil in fields and forests not their own ? 

They come where Summer suns intensely blaze, 
And Celt and Saxon shun the fatal rays ; 
Where gay Savannas bloom, wild forests rise, 
And prairies spread beneath unwholesome skies ; 
Where Mississippi's broad alluvial lands 
Demand the labour of unnumbered hands, 
With promised gifts, from endless hill and vale, 
From soils whose riches mock the traveller's tale. 
Where nature blossoms, in her tropic pride. 
All bounties given, but health alone denied ; 
They come to cleave the forest from the plain, 
From the rank soil, to rear the golden grain, 
The wealth of hill and valley to disclose. 
Make the wild desert blossom as the rose. 
To all the worlds unwonted blessings give. 
The naked clothe, and bid the starving live ; 
Where Amazon's imperial valley lies 
Untamed and basking under tropic skies 
They come, his secret treasures to unfold — 
Spices and silks and gems and countless gold ; 



THE H I R E L I N a AND SLAVE. 81 

For fields of cane, his matted woods displace, 
For flocks and herds exchange the reptile race, 
With tower and city, crown the ocean stream, 
And make his valley, one Arcadian dream. 

Slaves of the plough — when duly tasked they bring, 
Like the swart Genii of the lamp and ring. 
Their priceless gifts — their labours yield in time. 
Unbounded blessings to their native clime ; 
Though round it, darkly, clouds and mists have rolled. 
Of sloth and ignorance, for years untold ; 
Still, in the future, Faith's prophetic eye. 
Beyond the cloud, discerns the promised sky ; 
Sees happier lands, their sable thousands pour, 
Missions of love, on Congo's suppliant shore. 
Skilled in each useful civilizing art, 
With all the power that knowledge can impart. 
O'er the wild deep, whose heaving billows seem 
Bridged for their passage by assisting stream, A^C^-nyhA^ 
To Africa, their Fatherland, they go. 
Law, industry, instruction, to bestow ; 
To pour, from Western skies, religious light. 
Drive, from each hill or vale, its pagan rite, 
11 



82 * THE HIRELING AND SLAVE. 



Teach brutal hordes, a nobler life to plan, 
And change, at last, the Savage to the man, 

Exulting millions, through their native land, 
From Gambia's river, to Angola's strand, 
Where Niger's fountain head, the traveller shuns. 
And mountain snows are bright with tropic suns, 
See, spreading inward from the Atlantic shore, 
Industrial skill and arts unknown before ; 
Through their broad vallies, populous cities rise. 
With gilded domes, and spires that court the skies, 
Forests, for countless years the tiger's lair, 
Yield their glad acres to the shining share ; 
Where once, along the interminable plain_, 
The weary traveller dragged his steps with pain, 
In iron lines, continuous roads proceed, 
And steam outstrips the ostrich in its speed ; 
Timbuctoo's towers and fabled walls, that seem 
The fabric only of a traveller's dream, 
Spread, a broad mart, where commerce brings her stores, 
Of gems and gold, from earth's remotest shores ; 
Wealth, art, refinement, follow in her train, 
Learning applauds a new Augustan reign, ^^ 



THE HIRELING AND SLAVE. 83 

To Tropic suns, her fruits and flowers unfold, 
And Lybia hails, at last, her age of gold. 

For these great ends, hath heaven's supreme command 
Brought the black savage from his native land, 
Trains for the purpose^ his barbarian mind, 
By slavery, tamed, enlightened, and refined ; 
Instructs him, from a master race, to draw 
Wise modes of polity, and forms of law. 
Imbues his soul with faith, his heart with love, 
Shapes all his life by dictates from above, 
And, to a grateful world, resolves at last 
The puzzling problem of all ages past. 
Revealing to the Christian's gladdened eyes. 
How gospel light may dawn from Lybia's skies, 
Disperse the mists, that darken and deprave. 
And shine with power to civilize and save. 

Let then the master still his course pursue, 
" With heart and hope " perform his mission too ; 
Heaven's ruling power confest, with patient care, 
The end subserve, the fitting means prepare, 
In faith unshaken, guide, restrain, command. 
With strong and steady, yet indulgent hand, 



84 THE HIRELING AND SLAVE. 

Justly, " as in the great Taskmaster's eye/' 
His task perform— the negro's wants supply, 
The negro's hand, to useful arts incline, 
His mind enlarge, his moral sense refine. 
With gospel truth, his simple heart engage, 
To his dull eyes, unseal its sacred page, 
By gradual steps, his feebler nature raise, 
Deserve, if not receive, the good man's praise ; 
The factious knave defy, and meddling fool,^^ 
The pulpit brawler and his lawless tool, 
Scorn the grave cant, the supercilious sneer, ^^ 
The mawkish sentiment, and maudlin tear, 
Assured that God, all human power bestows, 
Controls its uses, and its purpose knows. 
And that each lot, on earth to mortals given. 
Its duties duly done, is blest of Heaven. 



NOTES 



1. 

M. G. Lewis, author of the Monk, writino; of the neo-roes 
in Jamaica, says, " After all, Slavery, in their case, is but 
another name for servitude." Lewis is the most competent 
of witnesses ; honest, intelligent, prejudiced against Slavery, 
he gives the most conclusive testimony that negro slavery 
and European servitude are very much the same. 



"Irish whites have been long emancipated and nobody 
asks them to work, or permits them to work on condition of 
finding them potatoes." — Carlyle. 

The late census of England reports thirty thousand per- 
sons without habitations. The poor man's labour secures to 
him neither potatoes nor a home. 

3. 

" Oh, Sir," said a mother, " it is hard, to work from morn- 
ing until night — little ones and all — and not be able to live 
by it either." — London Labour and Poor, 



86 NOTES. 

4. 
" I attended the garden," (Convent garden), said one 
pauper, " for a week, and lived entirely on the offal of the 
market." " I walked about," said another, " two days and 
nights without a bit to eat, except what I picked up in the 
gutter, and eat like a dog — orange peel, old cabbage stumps, 
anything I could get." — Ibid. 

5. 

" The change from wire shirt buttons to mother of pearl, 

from metal coat buttons to silk, impoverished thousands. 

Even the abandonment of powder for the hair produced its 

share of distress — and so of a hundred occupations." — Ibid. 

6. 

The wigwams of Indians are palaces compared to the 
dwellings of labourers in the mining country. In a room, 
fifteen feet by eighteen, were two rows of beds, with no 
opening for air. The smell to strangers is intolerable. One 
miner declared the rooms unfit for swine, where fifty men 
slept in sixteen beds ; not a flag or board on the floor, where 
puddles of water were lying. In Lancastershire, Mr. Wood 
found forty people sleeping in the same room, all order, deli- 
cacy, decency lost in overwhelming squalor. He compares 
the condition of the monkey house in the Zoological gardens 
to that of the labouring population. In Devonshire, fami- 
lies of six or eight sleep in one bed — father, mother, grown 
up sons and daughters. "I have found," he says, " that if 
a number of empty casks be placed along the street in White 



NOTES. 87 

Chapel, in a few days eacli would have a tenant." — Sani- 
tary Reports. 

In a petition from the English miners to Parliament, it is 
stated that one tenth of their number, perish every year. 
It is there that young children are compelled to work. 

7. 
In the Sanitary Report, a witness says of a particular 
parish, "I believe this parish most fearfully demoralized. 
It is said that twenty years ago there was not one young 
female cottager of virtuous character ; there was not one 
man who was not, or had not been a drunkard, and theft and 
fighting were universal. 



At an inquest in Leeds, as stated in a Leeds paper, it was 
asserted by the Coroner, and assented to by the Surgeon as 
probable, that three hundred children, in Leeds alone, were 
put to death yearly, to avoid the consequences of their liv- 
insf, and the murderers are never discovered. 

9. 
The Sanitary Report states that, for three years prece- 
ding it, typhus, scarlet fever, and small pox were never 
absent from many hamlets and towns — the Royal town of 
Windsor being the worst of all. 

10. 

During the famine in Ireland dead bodies were found ly- 
ing about in the fields, and in deserted houses, and despair 
put an end to all moral restraints. 



88 NOTES. 

11. 

The Rev. Mr. Osborne, a Clergyman of tlie Established 
Church, in a letter to the London Times, says, " the exodus 
of the Irish is caused by the cruelty of the landlords. Their 
evictions made the starving homeless." 

In converting small farms into sheep walks, in Scotland, 
the house of Southerland has been conspicuous. This sys- 
tem has had the most pernicious influence on the labouring 
people of Scotland. It has demoralized the peasantry. It 
removes the labourers from the restraints of home, collects 
them in boothies or barracks, and initiates them in every 
species of vice. Hugh Miller, in his charming autobiogra- 
phy, gives a deplorable account of the demoralization of the 
Scotch labourers in the last fifty years. 

12. 

" They (the Exeter Hall philanthropists) would save the 
Sarawak cut throats with their poisoned spears, but they 
ignore the thirty thousand needle women, the three million 
paupers, and the Connaught potential cannibalism." 

[Carltle. 

13. 

The Abolition party hire spies or agents to report every 
thing in accordance with their own wishes and prejudices. 
They exaggerate facts, receive tales and rumours for truth, 
describe isolated abuses as the ordinary condition of Slave- 
ry — this they must do, to be deemed trust-worthy by their 
employers, and to earn their living. One of these absurd 
stories — lately revived by the Westminster Review — asserts 
that, in Jamaica, on a single plantation, there had been 



I 



NOTES 



seventy deaths from violence for six from natural causes. 
See what Lewis says of the same people : " I never saw 
people look more happy, in my life, and I believe their con- 
dition to be more comfortable than that of the labourers of 
Great Britain." 

14. 

The philanthropic labours of England have converted ef- 
ficient slaves into worthless hirelings — if we can call the 
men hirelings, whom no wages can tempt to work. The 
philanthropists are now devising a sort of slave trade in 
Coolies and free African labourers, in a vain effort to obvi- 
ate the effects of abolition in their colonies. The new slave 
trade is attended with enormous mortality. To show how 
entirely voluntary the Coolie system is, the Coolies have re- 
peatedly seized the vessels in which they were embarked, 
murdered the crews, and attempted to escape. In Jamaica 
landed property has become almost worthless, and hundreds 
of plantations have been abandoned. Nothing prevents the 
total ruin of the Colony but the power of England. The 
Island is a galvanised corpse. 

15. 

See the accounts given by late missionaries of the brutal 
cruelties common in Ashantee and Dahomey — reviewed in 
the April number of the Southern Review. 

16. 

Why these multitudes should wage war on the products 
of negro labour, as they sometimes threaten to do, is curious 
12 



90 NOTES. 

enough. Is tlie negro as well employed in his own country 
for his own comfort and happiness ? Does he produce, there, 
anything for the world's advantage ? Would it benefit the 
negro or mankind to restore, to African barbarism, the mil- 
lions employed in producing sugar, rice and cotton ? Could 
they be usefully employed at all, in any other way, for the 
world or for themselves ? To buy the product of his labour, 
is to contribute to his comfort. 

17. 

That the slave acquires very decent manners from his 
associations, is evident enough from the way in which runa- 
ways are received into very respectable society among their 
Northern friends. He is imitative, and naturally acquires 
something of his Master's politeness. A short time since, 
in Charleston, a party of Northern ladies and their friends 
were overtaken, in a walk, by a shower of rain. As they 
passed the door of a gentleman's house, the servant invited 
them in. He introduced them into the parlour, handed 
them refreshments, and expressed his regrets that his Mas- 
ter was not at home to entertain them. " You see," said a 
Southern lady, " an example of the ' down-trodden, brutal- 
ized Negro slave.'" -'What a pity," replied the other, 
'* that such a man should be a slave." But what made him 
such a man, it may be asked, and what becomes of the 
brutalizing effect of slavery? Would he have acquired 
these manners in Ashantee or Dahomey — from Pagan priest 
or Chief, who cuts off a head when he would send a message 
to the other world ? In what is his condition worse than 
that of a hirelinfy waiter ? 



NOTES. 91 

18. 

The transportation of the Negro to America by the older 
slave trade was, after all, only a rude mode of emigration — 
the only mode practicable for him. Tiie philanthropists 
have taken the trade from the merchants of Massachusetts 
and Rhode Island, Liverpool and Bristol, and thrown it 
into the hands of the cut-throats and scoundrels of all na- 
tions. That the trade should continue to exist under these 
circumstances, is the strongest evidence that the labour of 
the African is necessary to the tropical countries of America. 
This is so clear that English statesmen are attempting to 
contrive some kind of substitute for the slave trade as it 
formerly existed. The African emigrant is as much wanted 
in America as the Irish or German. Their labour belongs 
to different climates, and is equally required. As the Ne- 
gro cannot come, they must be brought. In the changes of 
public opinions, it is not improbable that a substitute may 
be required for the brutal and piratical trade which the 
Abolitionists have been the means of establishing, and which 
is the only mode by which Africans are now enabled to 
reach a better country than their, own. This substitute 
will be called the grand African emigration system, and the 
change of name will remove all objections. We shall see 
Messrs. Greeley and Seward engaging in it from philanthro- 
pic motives, and the solid men of Boston, Salem and Provi- 
dence conducting it with all their former enterprise and 
success. 

19. 

The chief revilers of the slaveholder are the people of 
England and the Eastern States. Jhey are the parties who 



92 NOTES. 

bought the negroes in Africa, brought them to America and 
left them in exchange for large sums of money. They 
made the system and enjoy the profits. Now that they can 
no longer carry on the trade, they slander the slaveholder 
of their own making. 

20. 

Levi, in his supposed anti-slavery character, may be re- 
garded as the type of the clerical anti-slavers, Beecher, 
Parker and others. Issachar, the strong ass bowing be- 
tween two burthens, as typical of the Abolition members of 
Congress, bowing under the double burthen of political 
speeches and abolition addresses, like Mr. Giddings, Mr. 
Seward, Mr. Sumner, and Mr. Campbell. 

21. 

In Rhode Island and Massachusetts, for example, where 
the morals of St. Paul are not sufficiently pure, and the 
gospel of Luke and Mark is superseded by that of Garrison 
and Philips. 

22. 

Mr. Giddings has enjoyed the singular honour of being 
turned out of Congress — where so much is tolerated, he be- 
came intolerable. He lately hastened to Boston to comfort 
and abet the rioters and murderers of an officer assassinated 
while performing his duty, and appears proud of his exploits 
there, in boasting and haranguing the rioters. 



NOTES. 93 

23. 

By some political manoeuvre in Massachusetts, the free- 
soilers and democratic party were enabled to place Mr. Sum- 
ner in the Senate of the United States. He seems to have 
a passion for rhetorical display in high places, and to gratify 
this little vanity, appears willing to sacrifice the existence of 
the Confederacy. For a small notoriety, he would set fire 
to the temple of civil and religious liberty, and become a 
great man by a great mischief. In questions of legal and 
constitutional obligation he claims to be governed, not by 
the constituted authorities of the country, but his own pri- 
vate opinion. This private judgment, or higher law, is 
only another name for what was formerly called " inward 
light," of which Dr. Johnson says, "it is utterly incom- 
patible with social or civil security — how can we tell what 
such a person may be prompted to do." 

24. 

Mr. Greeley's favourite mode of exhibiting resentment or 
indignation is by spitting. His last performance of a public 
nature, in this way, was spitting on the political platform of 
his friends, the Whigs. It is to be hoped that he is not 
addicted to soothing his cares by chewing one of the Slave 
productions. 

25. 
This man was imprisoned in Baltimore for abducting, not 
stealing, certain negroes in that neighbourhood. He was 
released by Mr. Tappan, with many lamentations over the 
money expended in effecting it. 



94 NOTES. 

26. 
During the Nebraska debate, Mr. Greeley, in his paper, 
advised his friends to set fire to the Capitol, burn up the 
archives, and destroy the Government, root and branch. 
This fashion of redressing a grievance is quite in accord- 
ance with his natural temper and character. He is not 
remarkable for meekness of disposition, or scruples in gain- 
ing an end. 

27. 
Among her profits for Uncle Tom, Mrs. Stowe received 
a penny apiece subscription in Scotland, from the labouring 
people, who starve sometimes for the want of potatoes. 

28. 

It is very remarkable that Mrs. Stowe, in her minute ac- 
count of the horrors of Slavery, should have overlooked the 
greatest of them all. She has never alluded to the canni- 
balism prevailing in the Southern States. The Abolitionists 
have been silent, without an exception, as to the horrible 
custom, existing universally in the South, of exposing Ne- 
gro children in the shambles of every city, town and village. 
Yet the fact is as certain as most of Mrs. Stowe's incidents 
and characters, and the evidence as easy to be obtained. 
For a consideration, she can procure witnesses who will 
swear that they have seen the flesh exposed, like beef and 
pork, in the public markets, and that it is a favourite dish 
at great dinners and barbacues. 

Indeed, what can be more probable ? The slaveholders 
are man stealers, why not man eaters ? They are more cruel 



NOTES 95 

and ferocious than the Fejee Islanders ; the Fejees eat each 
other — sat their own kin and countrymen; a fortiori, the 
slaveholders eat negro slaves who are not their countrymen 
or kin. The reasoning is conclusive. It is in the power of 
the slaveholder to do it, therefore it is done. It is within 
Slavery — possible, and therefore certain. What, in truth, 
could be more easy ? There is nothing to prevent the slave- 
holder from turning cannibal. He has no such difficulty in 
the way as the old Indian convert in Southey's history of 
Brazil, who complained, in her last illness, to the Missionary 
Father, because there was nobody who would shoot a little 
boy of a neighbouring tribe for her, and comfort her poor 
old stomach with the delicate bones of its little hands. The 
slaveholder may shoot his boy whenever he chooses, or get 
him without shooting. The topic is recommended to Messrs. 
Greeley and Garrison ; and particularly to Mrs. Stowe in her 
next story. It will be as authentic as the rest of her facts, 
and as readily believed by her Northern and European 
readers. 

29. 
None submit to entering the poor house except in extreme 
want. Some are hardly able to walk, before they will apply. 

[London Labour, etc. 

30. 

The Westminster Review, in a late number, says : '' One 
half of the people of Great Britain can neither read nor 
write," and " as regards depravity, brutality, and crime, 
they are in no way superior to the worst population of any 



96 NOTES. 

Other country." Of the one hundred and forty-one thousand 
registered marriages of the last year, nearly half of the par- 
ties could not write their names. " In France," Mr. Alison 
says, " two-thirds of the people can neither read nor write." 
If Europe, at the end of so many centuries, has done so lit- 
tle for her peasantry, with what decency can her people 
upbraid the slaveholder for doing so little for his slaves. 
He has had the savage to civilize. They have their own 
blood and kindred to improve. He has done more to edu_ 
cate the black, in the large sense of the term, than they to 
educate the white. But it may be said that the slaveholder 
prohibits teaching to the slave Yes, teaching of a certain 
kind, from certain persons. But it is enough to say, on this 
subject, that the slave who wishes to learn, and is able, can 
always learn in the family of his master. Many slaves do 
read, and many are able to write. It is to be hoped that 
the State will modify the existing law on this subject ; it has 
no other effect than to furnish occasion for misrepresentation 
and reproach, where there is no real cause for either. It 
misleads her friends and encourages her enemies. 

31. 

Whenever allusions are made to the use of the whip in 
the Southern States, by Abolition writers, it is assumed that 
it is for the gratification only of the master's passions that 
the slave is punished. But the whip is the slave's punish- 
ment for offences, which in hireling States would consign 
the offender to jail or the galleys, to transportation or death. 
It is the penalty for assaults, thefts, drunkenness^ neglect of 
work — this last offence^ in Europe, is punished with starva- 



NOTES. 97 

tion. " No law stands between the ruined labourer and star- 
vation. He has no right to life unless he can support him- 
self." See Beach's Travels in France. 

In England, in 1846, the number whipped, fined, and 
discharged was two thousand four hundred and sixty-eight. 
In similar cases the negro slave would receive the whipping 
and escape the fine and prison. He is whipped for the same 
offences as the whiteman, and, when his master is the judge, 
he has, nine times in ten, the most lenient of judges. 

32. 

A convent was destroyed by the mob near Boston. 
Churches, there and elsewhere, have been burnt by rioters. 
Violence and outrage are increasing yearly at the North. 
In Boston, lately, an officer of the Federal Government was 
murdered, while in the discharge of his duty, by a gang of 
white and black ruffians, instigated by men of wealth and 
by clergymen. 

33. 

In these country churches, where sometimes three or four 
hundred slaves assemble with a dozen whites, the delight of 
the negroes is in their spiritual songs and hymns. The 
favourite subjects are Jordan's banks, and the happy land, 
to which the singers are travelling. Their voices are good, 
and they are never weary of singing. The Sunday service 
is a source of infinite enjoyment to them, and they exhibit 
perfect decorum and attention. 
13 



98 NOTES. 

34. 

" Come men," says one, " be lively, let us finish work, and, 
after sun down, we will have a possum hunt." "Done," 
says another, " and if the old coon comes in the way of my 
dog Pincher, I be bound for it, he will shake the life out of 
him." The negroes work with increased alacrity, with faces 
animated by the expected hunt. One hums the old song of 
" Possum up the Gum tree/' and the whole field is pre^ 
vented from bursting into full chorus by the driver's notions 
only of decorum and order." — Audubon and Bachman's 
Quadrupeds of America. 

35. 

The star shaped dogwood blossom is the herald of the 
drum fishing season in the Southern inlets. This is a sort 
of jubilee for the negroes, whose enjoyments would astonish 
and perplex the good people who are lamenting their un- 
happy condition with so much noisy sorrow and pretended 
concern. 

36. 

Lemon Island, in Port Royal Bay, is one of the places 
said to be the site of the early French settlements under 
Laudoniere. It is reported that a stone, with a flower carved 
upon it, was formerly to be seen on the Island ; that it stood 
near the margin of the water ; and that it has been washed 
into the stream by the gradual encroachment of the tides. 

37. 

It is a great beauty of Mr. Webster's character that, in 
the midst of his public avocations, he retained, fresh and 



NOTES. 99 

unabated, his love for rural occupations and country sports. 
He was beloved by his neighbours for the heartiness of his 
sympathy in their simple pursuits and amusements, as well 
as admired for the grandeur of his intellectual character and 
acquirements. His two great contemporaries were equally 
attached to the country and its occupations. 

38. 
A barbarous people perishes always, if placed in contact 
with a stronger civilized race, except when they occupy to 
each other the relation of master and slave. The destruc- 
tion is nearly complete in North America. It is in progress 
in Australia and Southern Africa. Nothing but climate has 
protected the central part of the African continent from 
being occupied by Europeans to the destruction of the 
natives. 

39. 
That the abolition of slavery has ruined the West India 
colonies is a certain fact, admitting no dispute. Hayti is 
under the rule of a black despot. It produces nothing. It 
was formerly the richest of the European colonies. Under 
American slaveholders, with their slaves, it would soon re- 
sume its productiveness and wealth. Jamaica is yearly 
becoming more desperate in her condition. Her white peo- 
ple are leaving her. Plantations are unsaleable. Every 
thing is hastening to destruction. Cuba, a slave island, is 
incomparably flourishing. The abolition of slavery would 
ensure her speedy ruin. The conclusion from all this is ob- 
vious enough. Every thing serves to show that the labour 



100 NOTES. 

of tlie black emigrant is as necessary to the Tropical coun- 
tries of America as that of the European to its temperate 
climates, and that the black must be in subordination to the 
white man. 

40. 

The blacks, in Hayti, have changed masters only. They 
are the slaves of a black chief, as in Africa. Their Pagan 
mummeries have been resumed. They are engaged in petty 
wars, instead of peaceful labours. The Emperor has his 
standing army, and is anxious always to employ it in the 
legitimate business of cutting throats — quite as much so as 
more important potentates. 

41. 
Carlyle says that the world will not permit Cuffy to lie on 
his back and eat pumpkins, forever, in a country intended, 
by Providence, to produce coffee, sugar, and spices for the 
use of all mankind ; that he must, one day or other, resume 
his work under brother Jonathan or some other master. 

42. 
Lord Grey, in his book on the Colonial policy of England,, 
expresses the hope that the planting a civilized race at the 
Cape of Good Hope may not be attended with the destruc- 
tion of the black races, and that black and white will amal- 
gamate. The wish is mere common-place sentiment. Lord 
Grey knows that the extermination of the black races is in- 
evitable, and that amalgamation is not possible with races so 
dissimilar. What would become of these parlour sentiment- 



NOTES. 101 

alities if the border dangers from the savage were to be 
encountered bj his Lordship's sons and daughters, or amalga- 
mation brought about through their instrumentality. This 
view of the subject has never occurred to Lord Grey. He 
is thinking of the poor emigrant peasant only, and is willing 
enough, like other philosophers, to try his experiments ''in 
mli corpore.^'' What will it signify, if, in the course of them, 
the English emigrant pauper is knocked on the head by the 
untameable barbarian^ or sees his grand children debased by 
the blood of an inferior and savage race ? It will in no de- 
gree affect the safety and comfort of his Lordship's grandsons 
and grand daughters, or the purity of their blood. Can he 
really indulge any such hope as he expresses, in the face of 
all experience to the contrary ? Does he not know, that, in 
Pennsylvania, where the policy pursued was peace and friend- 
ship with the Indian, the Indian tribes have disappeared 
long since? The savage can resist neither war nor peace- 
able competition with a civilized race. In peace as in war 
his tribes perish unavoidably. We may lament this law of 
nature, but we cannot chano-e it. 

43. 

If the African ever attains to what may be called an Au- 
gustan age for him and his country, it must be in the way 
suggested. He cannot originate a civilization of his own. 
He cannot enjoy the benefit of the white man's assistance in 
Africa. From the slave only, civilized and instructed by 
slavery, can any regeneration be looked for on the African 
continent. Its Augustan age may be a very humble achieve- 
ment compared with the intellectual glories of Greece or 



102 NOTES. 

Rome, of Saxon or Celt. But if Africa cannot hope to pro 
duce the poets, orators, and historians of higher races, she 
may acquire the industrial arts, commerce and wealth, and 
at least so much learning and literature as will constitute an 
era compared with her present condition. 

Wherever genuine Christianity is established, it carries 
with it moral and intellectual improvement. We must be- 
lieve that it will be established in Africa, and carry there 
also the improvement that always attends its steps. This 
will not be accomplished suddenly, in a short time, by any 
convulsive movement, but slowly and gradually. It seems 
to be in this way only that Providence effects his great pur- 
poses. 

Nor is it to be supposed that the slaves. of America are to 
be emptied in mass on the African shores. For centuries 
the occasionally manumitted slaves will be the reservoir 
from which Africa will derive her farmers, artizans, teachers, 
and civilizers. But the African slave will be always re- 
quired for useful purposes in the tropical countries of Ame- 
rica, both North and South, and will always be employed in 
them. If the free German or Irish emigrant is wanted in 
the Northern, the African Slave is equally needed in the 
Southern regions of America. 

It may be asked, why should not the negro be allowed to 
be free in America, if he is susceptible of so much improve- 
ment. The reply seems to be conclusive. (There is an 
obvious and irremoveable dissimilarity between the white 
and black race. They cannot amalgamate, and can never, 
therefore, make one people. The inferior black race would 
perish if placed, as manumission would place him, in compe- 



NOTES. 103 

tition with the white. The number of blacks at the North 
are kept up by constant additions only from manumitted and 
runaway slaves. If the climate of Africa were healthy, the 
African tribes, like the Indians of North America, would 
have been exterminated long since by European emigrants. 
As climate protects him there, so slavery protects the negro 
here. Therefore it is that he cannot be made free in Ame- 
rica, for his own sake, even if it were desirable that he should 
be for his master's. His manumission would injure both. ^ 

44. 

It may be doubted after all whether the Abolitionists really 
wish to abolish slavery. For is not slavery the very breath 
of their nostrils ? Does it not assist them to attain all their 
ends? It enables parsons and Senators to instigate mobs, 
to riot and murder with safety, and even applause ; pious 
members of Christian churches to calumniate their brethren 
with pointy unction and self-complacency ; crafty dema- 
gogues to promote party and personal purposes, under hu- 
mane and patriotic pretences; and ladies, at fashionable 
soirees, to remove the evils and regulate the affairs of distant 
nations, in the intervals of music and refreshments. With- 
out it what would all these people do ? What would become 
of Parker and Chaplin, Philips and Folsom, Beecher and 
Garrison, if there should be no longer any slaves to be stolen 
or masters to be slandered. They would be shorn of their 
beams. Their salt would lose its savour. What wonders 
has not slavery done for the Abolitionists ? It has made 
Mr. Hale a candidate for the Presidency. It has introduced 
Mrs. Stowe at Stafford house. It has conferred on Mr. 



104 NOTES. 

Giddings the honour of being ejected from Congress by his 
fellow-members. It gives bread to thousands like Mr. Gar- 
rison, who could not otherwise earn it, and notoriety to Mr. 
Tappan, Mr. Jay, and a hundred more, who, without its 
help, would be hopeless of attracting public attention. Sla- 
very is their goose that lays golden eggs for them every day. 
Can we suppose that they will imitate the simpleton of ancient 
times and seek to destroy it ? The happening of any evil to 
to the master, or to the slave, from the abolition of slavery 
would not, it is admitted, be worthy of a moment's attention ; 
but it would be a very serious calamity indeed if any dam- 
age, from that event, should befall the abolitionists. Will 
they risk the loss of the honours, distinctions, money and 
elevated society that they enjoy by means of slavery ? Will 
they not, on the contrary, carefully preserve it, and, with 
it, the golden advantages it now bestows on them ? 

45. 
" Grant that the negro is a distinct species, or even a me- 
tamorphosed Orang, if you will, and what difference does it 
make to the social effect of the " domestic institution"— the 
ultimate ground upon which both moralist and legislator 
must take their stand in arguing either for or against it. We 
do not prosecute the drover or the cabman because we be- 
lieve the poor maltreated ox or horse to be our brother, a 
child of Adam and Eve like ourselves ; but because this and 
all other brutality is an evil to society — because it degrades 
the man who practices it, and increases the proclivity to 
crimes injurious to society, in himself and others. And we 
are bound to put down the slsiYeliolder fo?- precisely the same 



NOTES. 105 

reason, and not because of a hypothetical cousinhood with 
his victim which may or may not exist, etc. Ethnology had 
better perish as a science, than be swamped by the accession 
to her ranks of the Legares of the South." — Westminster 
Heview. 

The above extract from the Westminster Review of July, 
1854, is a specimen of the fairness and common sense, and 
of the garniture of slander, self-sufficiency and arrogant 
assumption, with which the Slavery question is commonly 
treated in England. 

It makes no difference, it seems, in considering the subject 
of Slavery, whether Negroes are men or apes. Englishmen 
are pruhibited from cruelty to horses, not because the horse 
is a cousin, but because " this and all other brutality is an 
evil to society, degrades the man who practices it," etc. It 
is on this ground that cruelty to the horse is forbidden 
among cabmen and drovers, and " it is on this ground j)rc- 
cisely that moralist and legislator must take their stand in 
arguing for or against Slavery." This is the reviewer's 
position. But Parliament, to prevent cruelty to horses, 
does not manumit the horse. The law does not prohibit 
the owning of horses, because the horse is sometimes abused. 
Because there are, and will be, cruel horse masters among 
cabmen, drovers, and gentlemen too, Parliament has not 
turned out all the horses in England to grass and freedom. 
Yet to prevent cruelty to Slaves, they insist on manumitting 
the Slave. Can the reviewer explain how it is that the 
good people of England adopt such different measures in 
these similar cases, as the reviewer himself admits them to 
be. Cruelty to the horse " is an evil to society," etc.,there- 
14 



106 NOTES. 

fore the law prevents or punishes cruelty to the horse. 
Cruelty to the Slave " is an evil to society," etc., therefore 
Parliament abolishes Slavery. Certainly the most effectual 
way to prevent the horse from being beaten in harness, is to 
prohibit his being put in harness at all ; as the most certain 
way to prevent the negro from being flogged for laziness, is 
to release him from labour altogether. Why not adopt the 
same way with the horse that they pursued with the Negro ? 
If the reviewer should be at a loss to explain the cause 
of these different logical conclusions from the same premi- 
ses, I would offer a suggestion to assist the enquiry. It is 
because the horses belong to the people who legislate, and 
the Slaves to the people who were legislated for. The Eng- 
lish people own the horses, and a few feeble colonists owned 
the Slaves. The absurdity, therefore of proposing to manu- 
mit horses, to prevent cruelty, is very manifest. But the 
other absurdity was not seen at all. Eeverse the case : let 
horses, hard- worked and ill-treated, be in Jamaica only, and 
no horses in England, and the philanthropists would have 
applied all their energies to bring about a general manu- 
mission of horses. Mr. Clarkson might have been as zeal- 
ous and successful with the British Parliament, in behalf of 
the horse, as he has been in behalf of the Negro. 



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